Majid Mahmood, a partner at City Law Chambers in Luton and director at Liberty Law Solicitors, has been fined £25,000 and ordered to pay legal costs of £9,595 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over his anti-Semitic social media posts.
WIN reports:
“His behavior was reprehensible and not to be minimized,” said a tribunal ruling on a UK lawyer’s anti-Semitic Facebook posts.
Majid Mahmood, a partner at City Law Chambers in Luton and a director at Liberty Law Solicitors, has recently been fined £25,000 and ordered to pay costs of £9,595 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over his anti-Semitic social media posts.
Following the case launched by the UK’s Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), Mahmood was also suspended as a solicitor for 12 months, but that period of suspension is itself suspended, so he can continue to practice as a solicitor unless he re-offends.
In 2016, a social media user reported anti-Semitic Facebook comments posted by Mahmood, which he posted underneath a video about the airlifting of Jewish refugees.
Mahmood commented: “The[y] aint gods chosen people they’re Satans love child’s and it’s a shame e the plane carrying them didn’t blow up mid air [all sic].”
When another user remonstrated with him, he told them to: “go and f*** yourself.”
The user reported Mahmood to the CAA, which submitted a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
The SRA merely obtained an apology from Mahmood and warned him not to post such comments again.
The CAA commenced the first steps in taking legal action against the SRA, and the matter was transferred to the SRA’s senior management, which corrected the decision and instead of closing the matter opened a formal regulatory investigation.
In its own investigation, the SRA itself revealed that in 2015 Mahmood had posted on Facebook: “Somebody needs to shoot all the Israeli Zionists dead then send their bodies to America as a present for Obama and his Zionist pals.” The incident was reported to the SRA, but not to CAA, and the SRA took no action on that occasion.
The SRA brought a case against Mahmood at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Mahmood, whose firm’s website proclaims that “the principal [sic] of equal opportunity and diversity are fundamental to our continuing success,” denied that he was an anti-Semite, saying he had some Jewish friends.