Michael Mansfield QC

Michael Mansfield QC was born in 1941 and educated at Highgate School and Keele University. Called to the Bar in 1967, he established Tooks Chambers, in 1984 and became Queen's Counsel in 1989. Michael has represented defendants in criminal trials, appeals and inquiries in some of the most controversial legal cases the country has seen, particularly where issues of Civil Liberty have arisen. Barry George, accused of killing TV presenter Jill Dando; the family of Stephen Lawrence both in the private prosecution for murder and the Public Inquiry and the families of victims at the on-going Bloody Sunday Inquiry in Derry and London. He also chaired an Inquiry into the 'Shoot to Kill' policy in the North of Ireland at Cullyhanna.

More recently he has successfully represented, Fatmir Limaj, the Deputy Prime Minister of Kosovo at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague; successfully represented clients in the notable 'Ricin' Trial, and 'Shaken Baby' Appeals and Nabeel Hussain in the so-called 'Fertiliser plot' trial; is acting for the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot by the Metropolitan Police in 2005 and Mohammed Al Fayed in his pursuit of the truth surrounding the death of his son, Dodi, and Princess Diana in Paris in 1997 as well as being involved in the Inquiry into the shooting of solicitor, Patrick Finucane. Michael has represented many families at Inquests, including Tom Hurndall and James Miller, two British journalists murdered by the Israeli army, the Marchioness Disaster, the Deptford/New Cross Fire; the Lockerbie/Omagh/Dublin Monaghan bombings, and Michael Barrymore.

Notable Cases Michael's past clients include: Superintendent Ali Dizaei of the Metropolitan Police and Angela Cannings, the acquitted 'cot death'mother; Tahira Tabassum, acquitted widow of the first British suicide bomber in Israel; the Orgreave miners who were unjustly accused of riot during the miner's strike in 1984; the Birmingham Six, who were released in 1991, nearly sixteen years after being wrongly convicted; those in the ABC Official Secrets case and the Operation Julie drugs trial; James Hanratty, hanged in 1962 for murder; 'spy' Michael Bettany; Frank Critchlow and the Mangrove; the Bradford 12 and the Newham 7 against the National Front; robbers in the Knightsbridge Heist; Colin Wallace; the 'Camberwell', 'Torso', 'Big H' and M25 murder trials; Judith Ward; Iraqi dissidents fleeing Saddam Hussein; Turkish and Kurdish exiles; Palestinians charged with the Israeli Embassy bombing in London and Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Michael has presented a numbers of television documentaries and series, including Presumed Guilty for BBC1. He is a regular contributor to television and radio current affairs programmes and was a panel member of The Moral Maze for many years. He has also published numerous articles for all the major broadsheets and law journals, a children's book The Whale Boy and most recently The Home Lawyer - a legal handbook. Over the last few years he has also given a number of successful talks at theatre venues around the country in a series entitled 'An Audience with….'