Barrister jailed for three years over revenge plot with convicted murderer client

Samreen Akhtar, 38, was sentenced to three years and three months at Manchester Crown Court for plotting a revenge attack with her client, a drug gang member later convicted of murder.

Huddersfield barrister sentenced for conspiring to cause grievous bodily harm

A barrister from West Yorkshire has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison after plotting a revenge attack with a client who was later convicted of murder, BBC News reports.

Samreen Akhtar, 38, of Sufton Street, Huddersfield, had been representing Tabish Ali following a shooting in which Ali was injured on Blacker Road in Huddersfield on 14 September 2021. The day after the attack, Akhtar was recorded on a telephone call to Ali in which she proposed finding the person responsible for the shooting so they could be caused serious injuries, according to West Yorkshire Police.

Akhtar was convicted of encouraging or assisting the commission of an indictable offence — specifically, inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent. She denied the charge, but was found guilty by a majority jury verdict following a five-day trial in June. She was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on Monday.

Ali, of Clare Road, Cleckheaton, was a member of a drugs gang, police said. He was subsequently charged with the murder of Jamal Nedd, who was shot and killed outside his Huddersfield home on 19 December 2020 as he drove his mother to work. Ali was convicted of the murder in July 2022 and received a life sentence alongside two other men.

The trial into Nedd's killing heard that the murder formed part of an escalating turf war between drug-dealing gangs, involving multiple violent firearms incidents. The shooting of Ali in September 2021 was believed to have been connected to the same ongoing feud.

Detective Inspector Paul Hutchinson said Akhtar would have been "acutely aware of her legal and moral responsibilities" as a professional working within the criminal justice system. "But she chose to act outside of those to plot revenge with a dangerous criminal involved in a violent gang feud which included the brutal execution of a rival for which he was later convicted," he said.

Hutchinson added that Akhtar had "became a criminal herself" and shown "a complete disregard for the standards that are expected of those in the legal profession."

Source: BBC News