District Judge Tanweer Ikram has been reported by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) after apparently “liking” an anti-Israel post shortly before a trial of three pro-Palestinian demonstrators for offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Judge Ikram found the three defendants guilty of wearing or carrying articles arousing reasonable suspicion of membership or support of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation, at a demonstration on 14 October 2023. The articles had images of paragliders. A week earlier, paragliders had been used by Hamas in its attack on Israel.

However, Judge Ikram decided not to punish them. He stated that he did not find that they were seeking to show any support for Hamas and gave them 12-month conditional discharges. His decision has been publicly criticised as unduly lenient and surprising.

Less than 3½ weeks before this trial, Judge Ikram had apparently liked a post on LinkedIn by barrister, Sham Uddin, which included a selfie-video of him participating in a pro-Palestinian march and the text “Free Free Palestine. To the Israeli terrorist born in the United Kingdom, the United States, and of course Israel you can run, you can bomb but you cannot hide -justice will be coming for you”.

This was posted on 20 January 2024 and the trial of the paraglider protestors took place on 13 February 2024.

Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UKLFI commented: “Given the issues in the case, Judge Ikram’s apparent liking of the above post by Mr Uddin indicated in my view an apparent bias in favour of the defendants and he should have recused himself. His liking of the post and his failure to recuse himself damage public confidence in judicial impartiality.”

According to press reports, Judge Ikram has claimed that he did not realise that he had “liked” the post by Mr Uddin. However, UKLFI has found that Judge Ikram appears to have liked another recent post by Mr Uddin, which does not relate to Israel or Palestinians.

Moreover, as someone who appears to have viewed Mr Uddin’s LinkedIn posts on more than one occasion recently, Judge Ikram must have been aware of Mr Uddin’s vitriolic hostility towards Israel in numerous posts on his account.

Judge Ikram appears to be well aware of the need for a judge to exercise care on Internet platforms such as LinkedIn. Addressing a meeting of the Association of Muslim Lawyers in February 2021, he answered a question about whether the Judicial Appointments Committee considers an applicant’s social media history during the application  process.

He said: “.. if you lack judgment and you put silly posts up and you get found out, that’s going to call seriously into doubt whether you have the correct temperament and judgment to sit on judgment to others…….. what if you were sitting in a trial and someone found something .. how embarrassing would it be, if you were a judge and you’d said something very, very silly and inappropriate on social media? I think, well it clearly is an important reflection of your public persona and I think people should be extremely cautious in what they say publicly.”

With thanks to GnasherJew for information.

Campaign Against Antisemitism has also submitted a report to the JCIO.

UKLFI has also written to the Lord Chancellor regarding Judge Ikram’s position as a Judicial Appointments Commissioner and intends to write to the Crown Prosecution Service regarding the possibility of an application for judicial review of Judge Ikram’s decision.