Mohammed Sarfraz

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Mohammed Sarfraz, a solicitor and director at Cartwright Solicitors, was found by the SDT to have posted antisemitic, offensive and/or inappropriate content on Facebook and Twitter between November 2019 and January 2022. The case concerned 21 posts; he admitted most, with 6 contested. The Tribunal applied guidance from Husain v SRA and the IHRA definition, finding the conduct crossed from legitimate political criticism into antisemitism and seriously offensive language through deliberate inflammatory wording. It found breaches of integrity, public trust and EDI principles. While no dishonesty was alleged or found, the Tribunal found a serious lack of integrity. The Tribunal imposed a 6-month suspension suspended for 1 year, conditional on completing EDI (10 hours) and antisemitism (4 hours) training, plus costs of £63,000 (reduced from £79,482.60 claimed).

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct was deliberate, calculated and repeated
• Misconduct was motivated by and/or demonstrated hostility based on protected characteristics (race and religion)
• Respondent knew or ought reasonably to have known the conduct breached obligations to protect the public and the reputation of the profession
• Use of deliberately inflammatory and offensive language designed to cause maximum offence
• Respondent was a very experienced solicitor who should have known better

Mitigating factors:

• Previously unblemished record
• Genuine admissions to majority of posts
• Genuine embarrassment, remorse and apologies
• Steps taken at remediation including self-education and meetings with Jewish community members
• Deleted social media accounts indicating limited risk of repetition
• Cooperation once legally represented
• No dishonesty or criminality