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17 Facts About Geoffrey Bindman

1.

Geoffrey Bindman has been Chair of the British Institute of Human Rights since 2005.

2.

Geoffrey Bindman won The Law Society Gazette Centenary Award for Human Rights in 2003, and was knighted in 2007 for services to human rights.

3.

Geoffrey Bindman's father Gerald was a GP who married Rachael Lena Doberman in 1929.

4.

Geoffrey Bindman attended the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and then left Oriel College, Oxford, with two degrees in law: a BA and a postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law in 1956, qualifying as a solicitor three years later.

5.

Geoffrey Bindman became a legal advisor to the Race Relations Board in 1966, a job he retained for 17 years, following its merger into the Commission for Racial Equality.

6.

Geoffrey Bindman served as a legal advisor to Amnesty International and represented satirical magazine Private Eye.

7.

Geoffrey Bindman was elected as a Labour councillor for Camden London Borough Council in 1971, representing St John's ward.

8.

Geoffrey Bindman did not stand at the subsequent council elections in 1974.

9.

Geoffrey Bindman continued his international human rights work, acting as a United Nations observer at the first democratic election in South Africa and representing Amnesty International's interests in the British litigation regarding Augusto Pinochet in the late 1990s.

10.

Geoffrey Bindman found the main charge was at worst "a 'bare conflict' having no adverse consequence" and said the Tribunal's verdict on its seriousness was "incomprehensible".

11.

Geoffrey Bindman suggested the decision to prosecute and the level of the fine were reactions to Bindman's "robust" defence to the charges against him.

12.

Hopper sympathised with the view that Geoffrey Bindman was treated "disproportionately because of his stature in the profession".

13.

In September 2012, Geoffrey Bindman told BBC Radio 4 he agreed with Desmond Tutu that British prime minister Tony Blair should be prosecuted on the grounds that starting the Iraq War was a "crime of aggression" in breach of the United Nations Charter.

14.

In March 2023, Geoffrey Bindman became a signatory to the "Lawyers are responsible" Declaration of Conscience.

15.

Geoffrey Bindman received honorary law doctorates from De Montfort University in 2000, and the Kingston University in 2006.

16.

Geoffrey Bindman was given the Liberty Award for Lifetime Human Rights Achievement in 1999, and the Centenary Award for Human Rights by The Law Society Gazette in 2003.

17.

Geoffrey Bindman later became a reader in Physiology at University College London.