Aamer Anwar (born 30 December 1967) is a British political activist and lawyer of Pakistani background. He was an active participant in the Stop the War Coalition, and campaigned against the 31st G8 summit at Gleneagles. He has been a longstanding critic of the Dungavel Detention Centre for failed asylum seekers, and is a trustee of the Time for Inclusive Education charity for LGBT-inclusive education in Scottish schools.
Early life
Anwar was born in England to Pakistani parents on 30 December 1967 and lived in Liverpool before moving to Glasgow, Scotland, in 1986 to study mechanical engineering at the University of Glasgow to join the Royal Air Force. He became a student activist and led a campaign against alleged racism at the city's Dental Hospital, which helped introduce anonymous marking across all faculties at the university.
He left engineering to study sociology and politics and was still a student when he was arrested by police officers for illegally flyposting on Ashton Lane in 1991. During Anwar's arrest, he was pushed to the ground, and he took civil action against Strathclyde Police. In 1995, Sheriff Evans found that one officer had assaulted Anwar and that it appeared to be a racially motivated attack. Anwar was awarded £4,200 in compensation and the policeman was temporarily suspended. Anwar, however, found himself criticised by the ruling sheriff in regards to the release of "bloated confrontational material" surrounding the case, with the sheriff stating that the allegations of racism did not influence his findings. He became a solicitor in 2000, initially as part of a Glasgow-based partnership, before founding Aamer Anwar & Co, Solicitors & Notaries in 2006. He has a teenage son and two daughters.
Legal career
Surjit Singh Chhokar
Anwar came to prominence campaigning on behalf of the family of Surjit Singh Chhokar, a waiter who was murdered in November 1998 in Overtown, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. The case had some parallels to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in England, which led to a radical overhaul of the criminal justice system and several inquiries. The inquiries were boycotted by the Chhokar family as they were not public, and were considered by the family to be a "whitewash". The Jandoo Inquiry, which the family boycotted and refused to give evidence to, heavily criticised Anwar and said he took on too many roles and also took liberties in interpreting for the family. In the latter case, Anwar led the campaign on behalf of the Chhokar family. He also served on the Stephen Lawrence Steering Group, set up in 2000.
In 2012, following the reform of the double jeopardy law, he approached the Lord Advocate on behalf of the Chhokar family to request that the case be reopened and reinvestigated. On 2 May 2014, Anwar and the Chhokar family met with the Lord Advocate, who confirmed that the following reinvestigation by Police Scotland the Crown was seeking to have the original acquittals of three men set aside in an application to the Appeal Court for a retrial over the murder of Chhokar.
In October 2016, Ronnie Coulter was found guilty of the murder of Chhokar. Following the conviction, Police Scotland and the Lord Advocate acknowledged the role of campaigning by the Chhokar family and Anwar.
Following the sentencing of Ronnie Coulter to a life sentence, a Crown Office spokesman said:
"TC" Campbell
In 2004 Anwar was the solicitor for "TC" Campbell and successfully appealed to have Campbell's murder conviction overturned. Campbell had spent 20 years in jail for the arson and murder of a family, an incident that had been part of the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars.
Tommy Sheridan
In 2010 Anwar acted as solicitor for Tommy Sheridan in HM Advocate v Sheridan and Sheridan. Sheridan sacked Anwar after a dispute between the two men over Anwar's refusal to stop writing a column for a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch.
In July 2011, Anwar presented a dossier along with Tom Watson to Strathclyde Police into alleged criminality at the News of the World, allegations of phone hacking and data breaches, and police corruption as part of the wider News International phone hacking scandal. The dossier led to a full-scale police inquiry by Strathclyde Police termed Operation Rubicon and the subsequent arrest of Andy Coulson and Bob Bird, Scottish editor of News of the World.