Letter before Claim against the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal SDT

Letter before Claim ... against senior members of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal - Gerald Sydenham and John Colin Chesterton - for deliberate misconduct and adoption of severe racist abuse which the SRA refused to investigate. Solicitors Gerald Sydenham and John Colin Chesterton supported a Norwegian citizen, a registered mental patient no less, whose decade-long inbred Muslim-hating Press rant (declared in parts as a hate-crime by the Met Police) surely encouraged Anders Breivik to commit mass-murder in Norway on 22 July 2011. This same Norwegian citizen's Press rant caused ex-Lincoln's Inn Solicitor Farid El Diwany to be told to: "Go fu*k Allah, the Camel' and that his beloved prophet Muhammad was a "confused paedophile" - declared a hate-crime by the Essex Police and referred to Interpol, with the added support of Lord Pickles who was Mr El Diwany's M.P.

John Colin Chesterton told the High Court that the following letter from Mr El Diwany to the Solicitors Regulation Authority was 'harassment' as part of his, Mr Chesterton's Protection against Harassment Act 1977 injunction application.

See below the various Press releases on me. Do I give a damn? No! It's a pleasure fighting these quasi-colonialist High Court bigots and their pimps at the SRA and SDT and their arse-licking mouthpieces in the legal Press. How these raving Islamophobes at the SRA, SDT and RCJ hate a thorough telling off in fulsome, Biblical/Quranic language: they call it 'harassment'. Bollocks! It's justified comment. All these officials, and civil servants at the SRA and SDT and the judges will one day retire, then die and be well and truly forgotten. Good riddance to them all.

Struck-off solicitor mounted ‘campaign of harassment’ against SDT chief, court hears

A solicitor mounted a ‘campaign of harassment’ against the chief executive of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and a member of the panel which struck him off, the High Court heard today.

Farid El Diwany is alleged to have breached an injunction preventing him from harassing Geraldine Newbold and Colin Chesterton, formerly a solicitor member of the tribunal, or any current or former member of the SDT 19 times in the space of 11 days in November last year.

The 63-year-old is said to have left a voicemail message on the mobile phone of Simon Tinkler, a partner at magic circle firm Clifford Chance who dismissed El Diwany’s application to be restored to the roll last year, three days before his bid to return to the profession was heard by the tribunal.

El Diwany was struck off in 2019 after he was twice convicted of harassment in Norway, in 2001 and 2003, and failed to tell the regulator. An appeal against that decision was rejected by the High Court, as was an application for permission to appeal.

Last month, his judicial review against the Solicitors Regulation Authority over its decision not to investigate his complaint against two members of the SDT which struck him off – one of whom was Chesterton – was refused as being totally without merit.

El Diwany appeared remotely before Mr Justice Sweeting today, arguing that his communications with the claimants were ‘innocuous’. ‘There was nothing illegal or harassing about them,’ he said.

Newbold and Tinkler also appeared remotely, which David Reade QC, representing the SDT, Newbold and Chesterton, said was because they did not want to be ‘present in the same courtroom’ as El Diwany.

Tinkler told the court he has sat as a member of the SDT ‘for over a decade and have done several hundred hearings and I have … never before had any contact from any of the individuals outside of direct within the tribunal walls’.

El Diwany apologised for being ‘blunt’ with Tinkler and said he would not attempt to contact the claimants again, adding that they should ‘rest easy and forgive and forget’.

Law360, London (November 15, 2022, 8:59 PM GMT) -- A London court on Tuesday rejected a former attorney's application to be restored to the roll of solicitors after he was struck off for failing to disclose that he had twice been convicted of harassment in Norway.

High Court Judge Edward Murray said Tuesday that Farid El Diwany had failed to establish that the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal had made errors of law or fact when it rejected his application to be restored to the roll of attorneys in November 2021.

El Diwany had also failed to prove that the tribunal committed a serious procedural irregularity by not going into more detail about its reasoning, the judge found.

El Diwany had tried to argue that the disciplinary tribunal was wholly unreasonable not to restore him to the rolls because he is a fit and proper person and did not need to be rehabilitated before he could be readmitted as a solicitor.

But Judge Murray said it was open to the tribunal to rule that the former attorney failed to provide evidence that he had been rehabilitated.

"Simple assertion by Mr. El Diwany that he was a fit and proper person was not sufficient," the judge added.

Judge Murray also said there was no error of law or fact in the tribunal's reasoning when it found that El Diwany had made his application prematurely and failed to provide evidence of his employment and training history since he was struck off.

The judge also noted that El Diwany had applied for the disciplinary tribunal panel to recuse itself from deciding his restoration application, arguing that the only way he could get a fair hearing would be if there were an all-Muslim panel.

The former attorney had claimed that the "Norwegian state-endorsed Islamophobic abuse" he claimed to suffer was an important part of his case that his convictions in Norway were unsound, according to the decision.

"The recusal application did not put forth a legitimate basis of objection to the SDT panel on the ground of bias," Judge Murray said. "It was not open to Mr. El Diwany to pick and choose his own panel."

Judge Murray also rejected various other grounds for El Diwany's appeal, including that the tribunal panel failed to engage with him at the hearing and reveal its thinking or possible objections to his readmission. Judge Murray said he reviewed the judgment and transcript from the hearing and there was no evidence of unfairness.

El Diwany said Tuesday he will appeal the latest judgment, and accused the disciplinary tribunal, Solicitors Regulation Authority and High Court of being "institutionally Islamophobic."

"I regard myself as a heroic whistleblower on Norwegian state-sponsored Islamophobia — all more or less condoned by an Islamophobically immature and incompetent SRA and SDT, and a very prejudiced High Court, where not a single Muslim judge or Black judge sits at the Royal Courts of Justice," El Diwany said.

El Diwany had been practicing as a solicitor at London law firm Gawor & Co. for two years when he was fired after informing his employer in 2017 that he had criminal convictions in Norway for harassment and failed to disclose this at his job interview or since the start of his employment at the firm.

Gawor & Co. reported El Diwany's admission to the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which ultimately got him struck off at the tribunal in December 2019.

The tribunal noted in its 2019 decision that El Diwany had twice been convicted of harassment in Norway in the early 2000s.

One of those offenses involved allegations that El Diwany made numerous telephone calls to a former friend in the mid- to late 1990s. He also allegedly sent more than 200 letters and cards to her, as well as to various individuals and public and private bodies in Norway.

The tribunal noted that the letters El Diwany allegedly sent his former friend contained repeated themes about her sex life, abortions, suicide attempts and her partner's drug abuse. They also allegedly contained references to personal issues relating to her parents.

For his part, El Diwany had argued for various reasons that the convictions against him were unsound, including that his former friend had mental health problems and was an unreliable witness. He also claimed that the prosecutions were "tainted by discrimination" and would not have been brought in the U.K., the tribunal noted in its 2019 decision.

The SRA was represented by Benjamin Tankel of 39 Essex Chambers, who was instructed by Mark Rogers of Capsticks LLP.

The case is Farid El Diwany v. Solicitors Regulation Authority Ltd., case number CO/102/2022, in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales.

EYE OF THE MEDIA is completely fucked-up in what they have reported. Very misleading and inaccurate. Wankers!

A solicitor struck off after he failed to tell the regulator of an harassment conviction in Norway has urged Court of Appeal judges to ‘have mercy’ on him.

Farid El Diwany was appearing in an application to re-amend his appeal grounds, in a long-standing fight against the Solicitors Regulation Authority to reinstate him to the roll. El Diwany appeared in the High Court at the end of 2022 where Justice Murray granted the SRA’s application for a civil restraint order.

Speaking as a litigant in person, El Diwany said: ‘Can you not see the hell I have been through? [I ask that you] have mercy and I not be struck off. This will follow me to my grave and continue for hundreds of years later. If I was not Muslim this would not have happened. You have got to have mercy on me.’

He said his strike-off was a ‘permanent blemish’ on his name and told judges his convictions were ‘unsafe’.

El Diwany added: ‘You have got to listen up and have a degree of mercy on someone that has done nothing wrong. Yes, I have said strong words but nothing the Daily Mail and Sun do not do every day.’

Master of the rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos, sitting with lady justice Macur and lady justice Falk, said: ‘We are not and cannot unpick 28 years of history. We might feel very sympathetic but that does not necessarily impact the legal decision because sympathy is not the legal question.’

Benjamin Tankel, appearing for the SRA, said there was ‘nothing new’ in El Diwany’s application. The regulator dealt with its submissions in writing.

In court filings, the SRA said: ‘The additional grounds upon which the appellant relies in his amended application notice do not amount to “exceptional circumstances” for CPR 52.30 purposes…they are simply disagreements with the merits of Warby LJ’s decision.’

It added that there was no apparent bias and ‘whether or not a solicitor’s conduct had adequate justification is quintessentially a matter for the SDT as a specialist tribunal’.

Law360, London (June 27, 2023, 5:02 PM BST) -- A former lawyer accused senior judges, a disciplinary tribunal and the state of Norway of Islamophobia on Tuesday, as he fights to be restored to the solicitors' rolls after being struck off for failing to disclose two harassment convictions.

Farid El Diwany told the Court of Appeal that his harassment convictions in Norway in the early 2000s concerned a woman who led "vile Islamophobic abuse" against him in the Nordic country's press.

"I have been accused of being a mental patient, sick beyond words, a sex pest," El Diwany said. "There is nothing worse, it has ruined my life. No British newspaper would have started something like this … this is Norwegian aggression."

El Diwany is seeking to overturn a 2021 ruling by Judge Pushpinder Saini at the High Court, which upheld a decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to strike him off, as well as Justice Mark Warby's refusal at the appellate court that year to give him permission to appeal.

He insists that Justice Warby should have recused himself because of apparent bias arising from another case El Diwany was involved in, among other "fundamental flaws" the struck-off lawyer says affected both decisions.

The High Court dismissed a defamation claim in 2011 that El Diwany had brought against Norwegian parties, including a reporter, a police officer and the country's ministry of justice. El Diwany pointed to the fact that one of the barristers at 5RB, Justice Warby's former chambers, had represented the defendants. He added that the decision came down the same week as the domestic far right terror attack by Anders Breivik in Oslo, in which 77 people were murdered — making the case "unforgettable" to the judge.

El Diwany told the court Tuesday that he pled guilty to the second harassment charge only after being told by a Norwegian prosecutor that he would be going "straight to prison" if he didn't. He insisted that his Norwegian convictions were only because he was a Muslim, but maintained it would be "hopeless" to pursue the appeal in a country with institutional bigotry.

El Diwany maintained in court that all he had done was send press releases to the public in Norway, in a bid to set the record straight about what was published about him in "Islamophobic" articles in the Nordic country's press.

He also leveled an accusation of Islamophobia against Court of Appeal Justice Andrew Popplewell, who refused him permission to revive his defamation claims. He said that Justice Popplewell refused his request to condemn the "filth" El Diwany received in abusive emails as the result of the Norwegian press coverage accusing him of "insanity" and "severe erotic paranoia."

"Can't you see, my lord, the hell I have been through in the last 28 years?" El Diwany said. "Can you not have mercy and not have me struck off ... because people will believe that? This will follow me to my grave."

The Solicitors Regulatory Authority said in writing that there was no reason to believe that Justice Warby would have had any discussion with David Hirst, the 5RB barrister who represented the defendants in the defamation case. The regulator for solicitors in England and Wales dismissed the argument that Justice Warby sought to excuse what El Diwany called Hirst's "bigoted" conduct, saying the allegations were unfounded.

Gawor & Co. reported El Diwany's admission to the SRA, which ultimately got him struck off at the tribunal in December 2019.

One of those offenses involved allegations that El Diwany made numerous telephone calls to a former friend in the mid-to-late 1990s. He also sent more than 200 letters and cards to her, as well as to various individuals and public and private bodies in Norway, the SDT's judgment said.

The tribunal noted that the letters El Diwany allegedly sent to his former friend contained repeated themes about her sex life, abortions, suicide attempts and her partner's drug abuse. They also allegedly contained references to personal issues relating to her parents.

El Diwany had argued that the convictions against him were unsound, saying that his former friend had mental health problems and was an unreliable witness among other reasons. He also claimed that the prosecutions were "tainted by discrimination" and would not have been brought in the U.K., the tribunal noted in its decision in 2019.

High Court Judge Edward Murray dismissed El Diwany's attempt to overturn in November 2021 the tribunal's strike off decision. The judge noted that El Diwany's application for the tribunal to recuse itself because he could only get a fair hearing with an all-Muslim panel was not made on a sound basis.

The SRA was represented by Benjamin Tankel of 39 Essex Chambers, who was instructed by Mark Rogers of Capsticks LLP.

The case is El Diwany v. Solicitors Regulation Authority Ltd., case number CA-2021-000980, in the Court of Appeal of England.

Correction: An earlier version of the story misidentified the judge in the SRA's arguments. The error has been corrected.