A barrister intent on becoming central casting’s latest anti-hero received a starring role today at Manchester Crown Court, where Samreen Akhtar bridged the previously unremarkable gap between legal advocate and criminal co-conspirator. Her new abode – courtesy of the Crown, not the Inns of Court – comes with a three-year-and-three-month sentence.
WHEN THE BRIEF CHANGES SIDES
For West Yorkshire’s law-abiding classes, the script was supposed to be standard: defender defends, perpetrator perpetrates, and neither the twain shall plot mayhem. Instead, ConfidentialAccess.by can reveal, Ms Akhtar – until recently of Sufton Street, Huddersfield – was caught on a police wire discussing a plan to hunt down her wounded client’s assailant, inflict serious injuries, and then presumably mark her file 'done.' Her chosen collaborator: Tabish Ali, not so much a client as a one-man criminal franchise, currently serving life for murder.
For some, a law degree opens doors – for others, only the cell ones swing.
Following an attempt on Ali’s life amid Huddersfield’s ongoing drugs turf war, Akhtar failed a most basic test of legal ethics: not encouraging grievous bodily harm with intent. Instead, law and order was treated as optional, client loyalty something to be enforced with a brick. A majority jury concluded her version of events was more creative writing than credible defence, and her career took a decisive turn from the Bar to the dock.
The case, as examined by ConfidentialAccess.com, sheds harsh glare on the legal profession’s capacity for self-policing and the spectacular perils that come with inviting the wolves into the prosecutor’s office. Notably, Ali had just emerged – alive, if only legally – from a murky tit-for-tat among Huddersfield’s best-armed chemical entrepreneurs, with previous form in the small matter of orchestrating the murder of one Jamal Nedd. In this world, a day in court is rarely the end, and often just a blunt instrument in a cycle of reprisals.
However, a barrister’s shift to the criminal side of the ledger is still rare, presumably as the official guidance on client care stops just shy of abetting violence. As Manchester’s learned judges observed, such behaviour represents a collapse of professional standards worthy of a Shakespearean melodrama, if less credible casting.
For the wider profession, it’s another premature obituary for public trust. The slip from advocate to agitator – and the ease with which it was made – leaves the legal system looking less like a safeguard, more like another interchangeable player in the region’s neverending turf skirmishes. As always, ConfidentialAccess.by will be watching. Just don’t ask us to defend your case.
