The legal firm representing Shamima Begum boasts Moors murderer Ian Brady as a former client and has a ‘trailblazing’ history of paving the way for the abolition of the death penalty in Britain.
Earlier today, Ms Begum lost her challenge over the removal of her British citizenship at the Court of Appeal.
The ISIS bride travelled to Syria to join the terror group in 2015 aged 15 and her citizenship was revoked on national security grounds shortly after she was found in a Syrian refugee camp in February 2019.
Legal firm Birnberg Peirce, who are representing Ms Begum, brought a bid to overturn that decision at the Court of Appeal, with the Home Office opposing the challenge.
However, this morning both the firm’s lawyers – Gareth Peirce, a senior partner, and Daniel Furner – stood outside The Royal Courts of Justice after three judges dismissed the bid.
Shamima Begum’s lawyers Gareth Peirce (right) and Daniel Furner (left) stand outside The Royal Courts of Justice after their client lost her challenge over the removal of her British citizenship
The ISIS bride travelled to Syria to join the terror group in 2015 aged 15 and her citizenship was revoked on national security grounds
Mr Furner promised Ms Begum and the government ‘we are not going to stop fighting until she is safe and back home’.
It comes after five years of legal turmoil for Ms Begum, who has seen two separate lawyers quit.
In 2019, Tasnime Akunjee – who once led a defamation case against Tommy Robinson – represented Ms Begum when she was stripped of her British citizenship and barred from returning to the UK on national security grounds.
Earlier this year, it was revealed he was standing as an independent MP in Bethnal Green and the Stepney constituency in Tower Hamlets.
In November last year, Ms Begum’s barrister Angus McCullough also resigned over the ‘unfairness’ of secret hearings and ‘being aggravated by sustained neglect of the special advocate system’.
The Birnberg Peirce firm currently representing the ISIS bride boast a special history, one which includes paving the way for the abolition of the death penalty in Britain.
After Derek Bentley was hanged in 1953 for the murder of a policeman, his family attempted to obtain a posthumous pardon for his wrongful execution and they approached south London solicitor Benedict Birnberg for help.
It set in motion a 30-year-long legal campaign that raised questions about the miscarriage of justice and helped eradicate the death penalty.
Tasnime Akunjee, who represented Ms Begum when she was stripped of her British citizenship, recently announced he is standing as an east London MP
Angus McCullough KC accused ministers of ‘neglecting’ the process and quit as Ms Begum’s barrister in November last year before secret anti-terror hearings
Ms Begum has claimed to be a victim of human trafficking when she left the UK to join ISIS in Syria
Birnberg, who has died aged 93, was determined to fight for civil rights cases and helped set a number of precedents.
One of his cases Sweet v Parsley (1970) established that a landlady could not be guilty of a drugs offence if she had no knowledge of her property being used to smoke cannabis.
Another case of his Brutus v Cozens (1972) showed that an anti-apartheid activist’s protest was not insulting behaviour.
Brinberg also campaigned in Israel, supporting the independent Palestinian state.
And after being introduced by friend Lord Frank Longford, Moors murdered Ian Brady became one of his clients.
The firm’s current senior partner – Gareth Peirce – began her career by working as a journalist in the United States following the campaign of Martin Luther King in the 1960s.
In 1974 she joined the firm Benedict Birnberg as a trainee and went on to become a senior partner following Birnberg’s retirement in 1999.
During her career she represented Judith Ward, who had been wrongfully convicted in 1974 of several IRA-related bombings, the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six.
Other clients included several mineworkers after the Battle of Orgreave, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes and Moazzam Begg, a man held in extrajudicial detention by the American government.