Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC and Rosalind Comyn have been instructed by Darragh Mackin, Director of Belfast-based solicitors’ firm Phoenix Law, to represent Irish rap group Kneecap’s Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh. Mr Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name “Mo Chara”, has been charged with a terrorism offence in relation to the alleged “display” of a Hezbollah flag on stage during one of Kneecap’s performances in London in November 2024. He is due to appear before Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday 18 June 2025.
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC is a leading human rights and international law expert who has acted in some of the most high-profile and precedent-setting freedom of expression cases of recent years. She is described in the legal directories as a ‘doyenne of protest law’, and the ‘mastermind behind Colston’, having successfully defended one of topplers of the slaver’s statue in Bristol. She was counsel in both seminal Supreme Court cases concerning the application of Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights in criminal proceedings, DPP v. Ziegler and AGNI Reference 1. She also acted: for Conradh na Gaeilge in the “Irish Headstone Appeal”, which overturned a discriminatory ruling preventing an Irish family in Coventry from inscribing an epitaph in Irish only on their mother’s headstone; for the “Stansted 15”, acquitted on appeal of their protest-related terrorism conviction; as well as for South Africa in its International Court of Justice case against Israel for breach of the Genocide Convention in Gaza.
Rosalind Comyn has a broad practice in public and human rights law, crime, and media law. Her cases often involve issues at the overlap of those areas, with a particular focus on freedom of expression and national security. She recently acted for Liberty in their successful challenge to regulations which sought to re-define the term “serious disruption” in public order legislation to encompass any disruption that is “more than minor”, and for the protesters who threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in their appeals against sentence. She also acts in the first judicial review of the Metropolitan Police’s use of Live Facial Recognition technology and in a number of cases concerning the State’s disclosure obligations in national security proceedings.
Also instructed on the legal team are Gareth Peirce, senior partner at Birnberg Peirce and Partners, Brenda Campbell KC of Lincoln House Chambers and Jude Bunting KC of Doughty Street Chambers. The media has reported widely on the naming of the legal team.