Ali Naseem Bajwa

Ali Naseem Bajwa QC and Eva Niculiu provide a critical overview of the main developments in the ongoing sexual history evidence debate

Ali Naseem Bajwa QC and Eva Niculiu examine the issues raised by use of the complainant’s sexual history in the Ched Evans rape retrial

On the night of 29-30 May 2011, a professional footballer, Clayton McDonald, on a night out in Rhyl, North Wales, met a 19-year-old waitress who was heavily intoxicated. McDonald took her back to his hotel room. 

Ali Naseem Bajwa QC and Terry McGuinness examine port stops carried out under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000

In June this year, journalist Glenn Greenwald published in The Guardian newspaper the first of a series of reports detailing US and British mass surveillance programmes, based on documents obtained by the National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden. On 18 August, Mr Greenwald’s partner and occasional assistant, David Miranda, flying via London from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro was stopped at Heathrow Airport under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Mr Miranda was detained for nine hours, questioned and had various items of electronic equipment seized from him. The link between Mr Greenwald’s publications and Mr Miranda’s detention is undisputed.

A media storm followed the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler. Ali Naseem Bajwa QC examines the fallout from the case

The medieval practice of determining guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused to trial by ordeal has happily long since passed. However, following the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler, the victim’s family described their experience of the trial as an ordeal and said that they had paid “too high a price” for the conviction. In the ensuing media and, inevitable, political storm the Criminal Justice System came in for intense criticism, much of it centred on a claim that the trial process is balanced unfairly in favour of the rights of the accused over the rights of victims of crime and witnesses.

Osama bin Laden was killed in May in a US military operation.  As the dust in Pakistan settles, Ali Naseem Bajwa QC and  Anna Morris consider the issues raised

President Obama’s announcement on 2 May that al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, had been killed in a US military operation in Pakistan was a dramatic and significant moment. The news was widely welcomed; however, once some of the facts of the operation became public, voices of disquiet began to emerge about the state killing of an unarmed person in another sovereign state and the fact that he would now never stand trial for his alleged crimes. Here we will examine those concerns and analyse some of the main issues that are engaged by the killing of bin Laden.

Paul Mendelle QC and Ali Naseem Bajwa argue that safety interviews should only be conducted when it is absolutely necessary to do so

There is a growing trend in terrorism investigations to conduct one or more interviews with a suspect in circumstances where he does not enjoy his usual minimum statutory rights. These interviews have no formal title and the term “safety interview” does not appear in any Code of Practice. They would be more accurately described as “urgent interviews” but investigators and courts usually refer to interviews conducted in these circumstances as “safety interviews”; accordingly, for the sake of consistency, we too shall use that term.

The practice of conducting safety interviews is controversial and open to abuse. Moreover, there is a degree of uncertainty amongst lawyers, the public and even investigators as to what a safety interview is, what rules govern its conduct and admissibility and the value of such an interview. Each of these issues will be addressed in this article.