Tahery, Ali

Ali Tahery was tried at Blackfriars Crown Court in April 2005 on charges of wounding with intent and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

He pleaded not guilty to the wounding but was convicted and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment. He pleaded guilty to perverting the court of justice and received a concurrent sentence of 15 months’ imprisonment for that offence.

On 24 January 2006, the Court of Appeal dismissed Mr Tahery’s appeal against his wounding conviction but allowed his appeal against sentence and reduced that sentence to seven years’ imprisonment.

Mr Tahery applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) alleging that the judge’s decision to allow a statement to be read from an absent witness violated his rights under Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR).

On 20 January 2009 the Fourth Section of the ECtHR ruled that the reading of the statement to the jury had violated Mr Tahery’s rights under Article 6(1) and 6(3) of the ECHR.

In the case of R v Horncastle and Ors [2009] UKSC 14 the Supreme Court considered and responded to the decision of the Fourth Section in Mr Tahery’s case and in the linked case of Imad Al-Khawaja.

The Supreme Court expressed its disagreement with some of the reasoning underlying the decisions of the Fourth Section in those cases.

The decisions of the Fourth Section were then referred to the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR and on 15th December 2011 the Grand Chamber gave its judgment.

Although the Grand Chamber departed from some of the reasoning of the Fourth Section, it unanimously held that Mr Tahery’s Article 6 rights had been violated by the judge’s decision to allow the statement to be read to the jury.

Mr Tahery first applied to the CCRC in 2009 when the CCRC concluded that it was unable to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal. In April 2012, following the Grand Chamber’s judgment of 15th December 2011, Mr Tahery applied again.

The CCRC decided to refer Mr Tahery’s conviction back to the Court of Appeal on the basis that the judgments of the Supreme Court and of the Grand Chamber raised a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would find that Mr Tahery’s conviction was unsafe and should be quashed.

The CCRC referred the conviction in December 2012.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in June 2013.