A senior judge who “liked” a post on social media that described Israel as a “terrorist” state and called for a free Palestine has been given a formal warning for misconduct.
Tan Ikram, 58, a deputy senior district judge, was disciplined for allowing a “perception of bias” by liking the post on LinkedIn which had been put up by a barrister who had previously promoted conspiracy theories claiming that Israel allowed the Oct 7 terror attack by Hamas.
The post stated: “Free Free Palestine. To the Israeli terrorist both in the United Kingdom, the United States and of course Israel, you can run, you can bomb but you cannot hide – justice will be coming for you.”
Three weeks previously, Judge Ikram had decided not to punish three women displaying parachute images at a pro-Palestine protest seven days after the Oct 7 attack. He gave them 12-month conditional discharges after they were found guilty of an offence under the Terrorism Act.
Judge Ikram referred himself to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) which revealed that it had received more than 60 complaints about the issue. It referred 43 of them to a nominated judge to consider.
The nominated judge found that Ikram had breached the social media guidance for the judiciary by identifying himself as a judge on LinkedIn and that his action in liking the post “had resulted in a perception of bias”.
A statement about the nominated judge’s findings said: “This was demonstrated by the fact that a link had been inferred between this issue and a case heard by Judge Ikram, which involved pro-Palestinian protesters” and that “the risk of undermining public confidence had been heightened by the fact that he had identified himself on social media as a judge”.
Judge Ikram, who has a CBE and is on the judicial appointments committee, claimed that he had inadvertently liked the post, the contents of which he described as “repulsive”.
He told the judicial conduct investigation that he had done all he could to mitigate the impact of his action and closed his LinkedIn account, which he said he had primarily used for his work as a diversity and community relations judge.
He commissioned a technical report that said he had no direct social media connection with the poster of the comment and stated that it was “abundantly simple” for a LinkedIn user to inadvertently trigger a ‘like’ using their iPhone, by double-tapping an image.
Liked the post accidentally
The judge accepted his argument that he had liked the post accidentally and noted that there were no other inappropriate posts or likes and that his posts primarily demonstrated his connection to his diversity work.
While the senior judge found Judge Ikram’s act “not deliberate or the result of carelessness”, they still found that his actions amounted to misconduct and taking into account that he had “taken full responsibility and shown genuine remorse”, recommended a sanction of formal advice.
However, Alex Chalk, the Lord Chancellor, and Dame Sue Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, the Lady Chief Justice, increased the sanction to a formal warning.
The ruling said that “after careful consideration”, Mr Chalk and Baroness Carr “were not satisfied that a sanction of formal advice was sufficient”.
In increasing the sanction, they said: “In addition to having breached the guidance on social media use, the judge’s actions caused significant reputational damage to the judiciary, as evidenced by the extraordinary number of complaints made to the JCIO.”
The ruling added: “They also considered it important for their decision to underline their shared view on the seriousness of misuse of social media by judges.”
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