Sunday October 11, 2015
By Ian Gallagher
A shadow Cabinet Minister has been accused of hypocrisy for accepting a lucrative offer to represent a country with an ‘appalling’ human rights record.Lord Falconer spoke at his party’s conference last month about his pride that it was a Labour government that passed the Human Rights Act. ‘It’s protected the powerless,’ he told delegates in a passionate speech.
But last week at the High Court he was lead counsel for the Republic of Djibouti – which has been accused of ‘crimes against humanity’ – in a corruption case brought against a London-based businessman.Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, the US law firm the Labour peer joined in 2008, a year after leaving office, is being paid an estimated £2 million by the East African country.
Djibouti has been rebuked by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the US State Department over its record, which includes false imprisonment, torture, denial of fair public trial, arbitrary arrest and restrictions on freedom of speech and discrimination against women and people with disabilities.
One campaign group, Djibouti Human Rights, said yesterday: ‘It is gross hypocrisy to say that you want to protect human rights in Britain, but to not act as though you want the same elsewhere. Our population still suffers daily at the hands of the government that gave Lord Falconer his fat pay cheque.’
Lord Falconer, a former flatmate of Tony Blair, was Lord Chancellor from 2003 to 2007. He surprised many when he accepted the position of Shadow Justice Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn last month.
At the Labour conference he drew extended praise when he pledged to ‘fight this nasty Tory Government’.
Lord Falconer said: ‘I am so proud that it was a Labour Government that passed the Human Rights Act. It’s protected the powerless – victims of crime, people in care and, yes, sometimes also the unpopular – against the might of the strong and the dictates of the State.’ The audience rose in unison when he added: ‘We stand by our human rights, no ifs, not buts.’
An independent report by Sir Tony Baldry, who chaired the Conservative Party’s Commission on Human Rights, described Djibouti’s ‘appalling human rights situation’. It concluded there was ‘sufficient evidence of crimes against humanity… for these matters to be properly investigated by the International Criminal Court’.
The latest case is the second time Lord Falconer has appeared in court on behalf of Djibouti. In March, he was counsel for the country in an application in the High Court for an asset-freezing injunction against businessman Abdourahman Boreh, claiming he had played a part in a grenade attack on a supermarket.
He later had to issue a grovelling apology after it was revealed that a partner at his firm had misled Mr Justice Flaux by failing to inform him that evidence had been falsified against a political rival of the country’s president, Ismail Guelleh.
Despite being ordered to pay Mr Boreh £850,000 in compensation, Lord Falconer’s firm is now back in court to make eight corruption claims against Mr Boreh. He denies all the claims, arguing that they are politically motivated.
The case, which is expected to run for at least four weeks, continues.
Yesterday, Lord Falconer confirmed he was a barrister representing the Republic of Djibouti, but said: ‘I cannot make any comment because barristers are not allowed to comment publicly on cases they are appearing in.’