Who? Fadi Daoud, 39-year-old consultant at London firm Lawrence & Co, who specialises in criminal law.

Why is he in the news? Represented Guardsman Martin McGing, one of the three British soldiers cleared of the manslaughter of an Iraqi teenager after a five-week trial at a court martial in Colchester. Guardsman McGing, along with fellow Irish Guardsman Joseph McCleary and Sergeant Carle Selman of the Coldstream Guards, had been accused of allowing 15-year-old Ahmed Kareem to drown after forcing him and three other looters at gunpoint into a canal in Basra, which they denied. The incident happened a week after the official end of the war in Iraq in 2003, as British troops tried to control the city. In May, the court martial cleared a fourth soldier, Lance Corporal James Cook of the Irish Guards, of any involvement in the death, on the direction of the judge-advocate. The verdicts followed claims that the prosecutions were politically motivated.


Background: Combined law and accountancy degree followed by the legal practice course, both at Leicester Polytechnic. He trained at central London firm Salfiti & Co, and qualified in 1997, joining Lawrence & Co in 1998.


Route to the case: 'A colleague picked it up as duty solicitor.'


Thoughts on the case: 'This prosecution shouldn't have happened - it was ill-conceived and misguided. It was clear that the main witness was not going to come up to proof and, at that stage, someone should have been robust and said that the matter could not go to trial, as there was no reasonable prospect of securing convictions and it was therefore not in the public interest to proceed. There may have been unwitting political pressure to proceed. The case also raised questions about the professionalism of the investigators - the Royal Military Police (RMP) - who questioned the soldiers for a long period without their lawyers present, when it must have been clear they were implicated in the matter and should have been interviewed under caution.' A spokesman from the Attorney-General's Office stressed that not only did the Army Prosecution Authority - 'a body of professional lawyers with service experience' - conclude that prosecution should be brought because there was sufficient evidence, but so did two of the most experienced prosecuting QCs in the country. The judge-advocate in the court martial also rejected a defence submission that there was insufficient evidence for three of the guardsmen to proceed with the trial, he said. An MoD spokeswoman said that when investigating this case, the RMP were faced with a very difficult operational environment, but as soon as evidence came to light that put the soldiers at the scene, they were cautioned and given their rights under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.


Dealing with the media: 'Although I have done it in the past, I found dealing with the media in this case different and quite daunting, but it was important for the client to make sure his feelings were put across to the general public. We did not want to speak to the media during the trial as we did not want to fuel the speculation and inaccuracies that were being reported, so we were unable to counter it until the trial was over. The media acted responsibly and respected this.'