Aamer Anwar - Human Rights Lawyer

The speaker at tonight's meeting of the Rotary Club of Motherwell and Wishaw was Aamer Anwar the well-known Human Rights lawyer. Aamer was born in Liverpool, moving to Scotland in 1986 to study mechanical engineering at the University of Glasgow for a future in the Royal Air Force.

Aamer said he became a student activist and led a campaign for black students at the city's Dental Hospital. He left engineering to study sociology and politics, and was still a student when, in 1991, he was arrested by police officers for illegally flyposting on Ashton Lane. During his arrest he was pushed to the ground, and had his teeth chipped. Following this incident, he successfully sued the former Strathclyde Police Force.

He graduated with an MA in Social Sciences in 1994, from the University of Liverpool in 1996 with a postgraduate diploma in race law, an LLB from the University of Strathclyde in 1999 and a Diploma in Legal Practice in 2000. He became a solicitor in 2000, becaming part of a Glasgow-based partnership, before founding Aamer Anwar & Co, Solicitors & Notaries in 2006.

He came to prominence campaigning on behalf of the family of murdered Indian waiter Surjit Singh Chhokar, which became known as the Scottish Stephen Lawrence case and which led to a radical overhaul of the criminal justice system and several inquiries. In the latter case, he led the campaign on behalf of the Chhokar family. In 2012, following the reform of the double jeopardy law, he approached the Lord Advocate on behalf of the Chhokar family to request that the case be reopened and reinvestigated. On 2 May 2014, Aamer and the Chhokar family met with the Lord Advocate who confirmed that, following reinvestigation by Police Scotland, the Crown was seeking to have the original acquittals of three men set aside in an application to the Appeal Court and for a retrial over the murder of Surjit Singh Chhokar.

In 2004, he was the solicitor for 'TC' Campbell' and successfully appealed to have Campbell's murder conviction overturned; Campbell had spent 20 years in jail for the murders that were known as the Ice Cream Wars.

Aamer was an active participant in the Stop the War Coalition, campaigned against the 31st G8 summit at Gleneagles, and he has been a longstanding critic of the Dungavel Detention Centre for failed asylum seekers.

He is known for his controversial statements in the aftermath of the 2007 Glasgow International Airport attack, in which he claimed, "That there is no difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber, the effects are still the same".

In 2008, following the trial and conviction of Mohammed Siddique in the High Court of Judiciary, he faced allegations of contempt of court in the light of a complaint by the presiding judge in the case, Lord Carloway, after he directly attacked the jury. He was the first lawyer in the UK to be put on trial for contempt of court for comments he made on behalf of his client at the end of a trial. While finding Anwar's comments to be "misleading", Lord Osborne did not find him in contempt of court and he was cleared of any misconduct by the Law Society. He was ultimately vindicated following the successful appeal of Mohammed Atif Siddique in February 2010, which led to his release and the quashing of his conviction under Section 58 - Collection of information of the Terrorism Act, which was described as a miscarriage of justice by the appeal court.