Hermer Pursued British Troops With False Claims. Starmer Made Him Attorney General. In January 2008, Richard Hermer read witness statements from Iraqi men alleging that British soldiers had tortured and executed their countrymen after the Battle of Danny Boy in southern Iraq in 2004. His response was to write that the cases were a good reminder of why he had wanted to become a lawyer. Within a week, his own team had flagged that the accounts were implausible. One claimant said he had taken a taxi to buy yogurt and ended up in a battle zone. Another could not decide whether he had been cutting grass, irrigating land or studying when the shooting started. A third said he was harvesting crops with a sickle. The inquiry later found he had been armed with an AK47. Hermer pressed on regardless. Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show Hermer, working alongside Phil Shiner, who was subsequently struck off and convicted of fraud, advising that the press release for a public announcement needed to generate sufficient interest. He suggested they might need to be more explicit about executions to bring in the punters. He acknowledged they needed wriggle room if the killings did not in fact happen. His colleagues, taking the cue, upped the ante. A line about torture and execution was added. Shiner accused the military of a My Lai-style atrocity at the press conference. By 2013, Hermer's own colleagues privately believed the case would be found to be nonsense. One described the claimants as lying. The claims were odds-on to collapse at inquiry. Discussion turned to securing settlement before the evidence could be tested in public. Hermer advised that offers of between forty-five and fifty-five thousand pounds per claimant would be low risk. He pressed for higher settlements even as the case disintegrated around him. The Al-Sweady inquiry ultimately ruled the allegations were deliberate lies driven by ingrained hostility toward the British Army. The claimants were not innocent farmers and labourers. They were members of the Mahdi Army, an Islamist insurgent group backed by Iran. The soldiers were fully exonerated. Hermer received nothing. He had chosen this case on a no-win no-fee basis. The cab rank rule did not apply. He selected it and stood to profit if it succeeded. Lance Corporal Brian Wood was decorated with the Military Cross for his conduct at Danny Boy. He spent years falsely accused of war crimes by Hermer's clients. He has called on Hermer to resign and described his appointment as Attorney General as disgusting. He said Hermer was representing the people trying to kill them. Keir Starmer appointed Hermer to the House of Lords in 2024 specifically to make him Attorney General, choosing him over Emily Thornberry who had held the shadow role. Starmer knew Hermer's background. He and Hermer had worked together in the mid-2000s to extend human rights laws to overseas war zones, the same legal mechanism Hermer then used to pursue British troops in Iraq. Hermer is now the government's most senior legal adviser. He oversees the legal basis for military operations. He is central to the Troubles Bill that is subjecting Northern Ireland veterans to the same lawfare he practised against soldiers in Iraq. The process he helped construct is the same process that drove a special forces veteran named Fred to attempt suicide after his medical records were handed to the families of the terrorists he had fought. The former head of the Army, General Sir Peter Wall, said Hermer's role in the Al-Sweady claims was tantamount to treason. A barrister is calling for a Bar Standards Board misconduct inquiry. Starmer calls Hermer his closest Cabinet ally. The country deserves to know what that friendship has cost the people who wore the uniform. "Lance Corporal Brian Wood was decorated with the Military Cross for his conduct at Danny Boy. He spent years falsely accused of war crimes by Hermer's clients."