Gareth Peirce

Jean Gareth Peirce is a British lawyer who has achieved worldwide notoriety, in particular for her work against human rights violations . Peirce was among other things legal counsel for the Guildford Four , the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six in their appeals process as well as Moazzam Begg, an inmate in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay .

life and career

Peirce, whose date of birth and maiden name are unknown due to her reluctance to face the media, first attended Cheltenham Ladies' College and Oxford University. After graduating, she worked as a journalist in the USA, where she accompanied the Martin Luther King campaign . She later returned to London, where she began studying law at the London School of Economics and graduated successfully. She then worked in the law firm of the human rights attorney Benedict Birnberg.

In the mid-1970s, Peirce supported various campaigns calling for a reform of legal and police regulations that would allow accused persons to be prosecuted and sentenced solely on the basis of witness identification. The George Davis Is Innocent Campaign and the Peirce-supported organization Justice Against the Identification Laws (JAIL) attracted media attention . During her work as a lawyer, Peirce represented Judith Ward , who was falsely charged in 1974 with alleged links to IRA bombings, the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven , who were innocently imprisoned for the Guildford bombings and the innocent detained in Guantanamo British Moazzam Begg.

Peirce is currently Senior Partner at Birnberg Peirce and Partners.

Honors and publications

Gareth Peirce was promoted to CBE in 1999 , but shortly afterwards asked to be allowed to take the medal again.
Her involvement in the case of the Guildford Four was also a central theme in the film adaptation of the case, entitled In the Name of the Father . The film role of Gareth Peirce was taken on by Emma Thompson .
Pierce published a collection of essays in 2010 under the title Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice . In connection with this publication, she recently criticized the handling of Muslim prisoners.

"We have lost our way in this country. We have entered a new dark age of injustice and it is frightening that we are overwhelmed by it. I know I am representing innocent people; innocent people who know that a jury they face will inevitably be predisposed to find them guilty. "
dt .:" We have lost our way in this country. We have entered a new dark age of injustice and it is scary to be overwhelmed by it. I know that I represent innocent people, innocent people who know that they will face a jury that will find them guilty. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peirce profile on bbc.co.uk (Engl.)
2. ↑ http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article3759966.ece
3. ↑ Colin Blackstock, "Muslims face 'dark age of injustice'", The Guardian , April 1, 2004

Publications

• Dispatches from the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice , Verso Books ISBN 978-1-84467-619-4 .
• Speech by Gareth Peirce regarding Samar and Jawad
• "This covert experiment in injustice" , The Guardian (February 4, 2004)
• "Was It So for the Irish? Gareth Peirce on the Position of Muslims in Britain" , London Review of Books (April 10, 2008)
• "The Framing of al-Megrahi" , London Review of Books (September 24, 2009)

Web links

• Gareth Peirce in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Gareth Peirce , Justice Denied's article in Issue 36 (Winter 2007) (PDF; 2.2 MB)
• Vanity Fair article on Mouloud Sihali, Feb 2008, No. 570
• "The Framing of al-Megrahi" , London Review of Books