Barrister banned from profession for shining laser at police helicopter
Mohammed Arif Riaz will be expelled from the profession and no longer be able to call himself a barrister, after the Bar Standards Board successfully brought disciplinary charges against him at a tribunal.
The Bar Standards Board said he acted with ‘astonishing recklessness’.
A five-person disciplinary panel found the 27-year-old had ‘engaged in conduct discreditable to a barrister’.
It also found he had previously failed to declare prior criminal convictions, after being convicted on guilty pleas of theft and handling stolen goods offences in 2004. Riaz was not present nor represented at the hearing which took place last month.
He was banned from the profession this week. The hearing was told that Riaz had admitted pointing a laser pen at the cockpit of a West Midlands Police helicopter in August 2011.
He was sentenced to eight months in prison last June at Birmingham Crown Court. The Bar Standards Board’s head of professional conduct Sara Down said: “Mr Riaz acted dishonestly and with astonishing recklessness. It is the best outcome for the public that he is no longer a member of the profession.”
Express & Star