Farrukh Najeeb Husain

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

Farrukh Najeeb Husain, a solicitor, was found to have used his public Twitter account between September 2020 and June 2021 to post antisemitic, offensive and inappropriate comments (including Tweets directed at Simon Myerson KC and Hugo Rifkind) and to have sent offensive emails to the SRA's investigating officer in December 2022. The Tribunal, applying an objective test and a synthesis of definitions of antisemitism (including the IHRA definition), found some Tweets antisemitic and others simply offensive, all touching on his practice given he identified himself as a lawyer. All three allegations were proved, establishing breaches of Principles 2, 5 and 6. There was no allegation or finding of dishonesty. The Tribunal found him fully culpable with high harm and no genuine insight, and struck him off the Roll. Although the Applicant claimed costs of £40,708.08 and the Tribunal found them reasonable in principle, no order for costs was made because of his impecuniosity (following Barnes v SRA). His subsequent appeal was dismissed.

Duties found breached:

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

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct was deliberate, calculated and repeated over a period of at least 9 months
• Motivated by and/or demonstrated hostility based on protected characteristics (race and religion)
• Bullying element together with puerile and crude sexual references
• Antisemitic rhetoric, vulgar/offensive language and racism which was ingrained behaviour
• No genuine insight or contrition; described his apology as a 'British apology'
• Very high level of harm to individuals, the public and the reputation of the profession

Mitigating factors:

• Hitherto unblemished/impeccable disciplinary record