Murder-plot solicitor 'warning to profession'

The jailing of a solicitor caught plotting murder when police bugged his conversations with suspected terrorist clients will provide a salutary reminder to the whole profession about the standards required of them, a court heard today.

Manmohan ’Johnny’ Sandhu, 44, from Derry, has pleaded guilty at Belfast Crown Court to inciting loyalist paramilitaries to murder and four charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

He changed his plea to guilty last week, three days in to a trial which had been expected to last up to six weeks.

He had been due to be sentenced today but the judge, Mr Justice Deeny, put sentencing back until Friday after hearing a plea in mitigation by defence barrister Arthur Harvey QC.

He argued his client’s offences had been at the lower end of the scale and, having pleaded guilty – albeit once the trial was under way – was entitled to substantial discount to his prison term.

Mr Harvey said the court would be concerned with the protection of the solicitors profession.

And he said the sentence his client got would have “the salutary effect of reminding all of the profession that their conduct was required to be of the highest standards and any breach was a let down”.

Mr Harvey added: “It is almost unimaginable that he will be readmitted to the role of solicitor.”

No member of the shamed lawyer’s family was in court after what had been an undoubted devastating blow to them, he said.

Sandhu has already been suspended by the Law Society Council pending an independent disciplinary tribunal.

The married Indian-born father of two, who was brought to the North at the age of four, sat head bowed as Mr Harvey sought to mitigate his crime.

The charges against Sandhu arose from the attempted murder of a taxi driver and the murders of two men during a power struggle between the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force and Loyalist Volunteer Force in 2005.

He was charged after police covertly recorded conversation he had with loyalist suspects in police custody.

As well as pleading guilty to inciting others to murder taxi driver Jonathan Hillier, he also pleaded guilty to attempting to frustrate police investigations into the UVF murders of Jameson Lockhart and Andrew Cully and using his role as a solicitor to keep members of a terrorist organisation informed of the progress of police investigations.

Police used powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to record the lawyer’s conversations with his client.

He claimed it was against the law for police to record the conversations with clients because of legal professional privilege.

However the British House of Lords ruled in March that the law did allow for the surveillance of privileged communications.

Mr Harvey told the judge the Lords had added the rider that there were “significant deficiencies” in the law and as a result the PSNI had decreed no similar surveillance would be carried out until the deficiencies were addressed.

Sandhu remains in custody pending his sentence on Friday.