Edward Craven

Eddie has a wide public law and human rights practice. In 2020 he was named by Legal 500 as Junior of the Year for Civil Liberties and Human Rights. He has acted in a number of high profile Human Rights Act claims and judicial reviews including:

• Elgizouli v Home Secretary (Supreme Court appeal concerning lawfulness of Government’s facilitation of the death penalty in the United States)
• USA v Julian Assange (Representing Julian Assange in extradition proceedings brought by the United States)
• Belhaj v Straw; Rahmatullah v Ministry of Defence (Supreme Court appeals concerning state immunity and Foreign Act of State doctrine in claims concerning unlawful rendition, detention and torture by foreign states)
• Beghal v Director of Public Prosecutions (Supreme Court appeal concerning ECHR compatibility of Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Serdar Mohammed and Rahmatullah v Ministry of Defence (Supreme Court appeals concerning Crown Act of State doctrine in tort claims for unlawful detention by UK forces during overseas military operations)
• SXH v Crown Prosecution Service (Supreme Court appeal concerning application of Article 8 to prosecution of vulnerable refugees)
• B v H.M Advocate (Supreme Court appeal concerning ECHR compatibility of Scottish sexual offences legislation)
• R (Bashir) v Home Secretary (Supreme Court appeal concerning applicability of the UN Refugee Convention to the United Kingdom’s Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus)
• Smith v Ministry of Defence (Supreme Court appeal concerning extra-territorial application of the ECHR)
• Liberty v GCHQ and Security and Intelligence Services (challenge before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal concerning the legality of mass interception and intelligence sharing regimes under RIPA)
• R (David Miranda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (challenge to lawfulness of detention and seizure of journalistic material under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000)
• Alseran and Al-Waheed v Ministry of Defence (representing a number of Iraqi civilians in human rights claims concerning assault and unlawful imprisonment in Iraq)
• R (Help Refugees) v Home Secretary (judicial review challenging the lawfulness of the Government’s implementation of the ‘Dubs amendment’ (relocation of specified number of unaccompanied refugee children to the UK))
• Abu Zubaydah v Home Office ­– Representing a Guantanamo Bay detainee in claim for damages for UK complicity in unlawful rendition and torture.
• R (Saifullah) v Secretary of State for Defence – Representing bereaved family members challenging failure to conduct an Article 2 compliant investigation into the killing of their relatives by British special forces in Afghanistan.

Eddie has a significant practice in public and private international law. He represented Croatia in proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the Genocide Convention (Croatia v Serbia). He is currently representing the Republic of Somalia in an international maritime boundary dispute before the ICJ (Somalia v Kenya) and is representing the Co-Operative Republic of Guyana in proceedings before the ICJ concerning the validity of an 1899 arbitral award (Guyana v Venezuela). He recently served as the assistant to an ICSID arbitral tribunal and is a member of the Attorney-General’s Public International Law Panel.

Eddie has also acted in a number of complex international group claims before the English courts. These include:

• Lungowe v Vedanta Resources Plc and Konkola Copper Mines – Representing almost two thousand rural Zambians in proceedings (including a landmark appeal before the Supreme Court) concerning environmental damage and personal injury caused by the discharge of toxic pollution from the world’s largest open cast copper mine.
• HRH Okpabi v Royal Dutch Shell – Representing a Nigerian community of approximately 40,000 villagers in proceedings (including a landmark appeal before the Supreme Court) concerning extensive environmental damage caused by oil spills in Rivers State, Nigeria.
• Various Claimants v British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco – Representing more than 7,000 Malawian tenant farmers in claims for unjust enrichment, negligence and conversion against two of the world’s largest tobacco groups.
• Kenyan Emergency Group Litigation – Representing several thousand claimants in a group action against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office concerning human rights violations in Kenya during the 1950s.
• Kalma & Others v African Minerals Ltd – Representing more than 40 claimants in personal injury claims concerning alleged corporate complicity in the assault of protestors in Sierra Leone.
• AAA v Unilever Plc – Representing more than 200 claimants in negligence claims concerning failure to protect against the foreseeable risk of post-election ethnic violence at a tea plantation in Kenya.
• Bodo Community v Shell Petroleum Development Co of Nigeria – Representing more than 15,000 claimants in proceedings concerning extensive pollution in Rivers State, Nigeria.

Eddie has extensive experience of bringing claims and third party interventions before the European Court of Human Rights. His cases include:

• Ten Human Rights Organisations v United Kingdom – Representing a consortium of international human rights organisations in challenges to the ECHR compatibility of the UK’s mass telecommunications interception regime and international intelligence sharing regime.
• Al-Waheed v United Kingdom – Representing an Iraqi civilian in an ongoing challenge to the legality of detention during the armed conflict in Iraq.
• Beghal v United Kingdom – Representing the applicant in a successful challenge to the ECHR compatibility of UK “stop and search” terrorism legislation under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
• Briggs-Price v United Kingdom – Representing an individual in an ongoing challenge to the compatibility of confiscation procedures under UK drug trafficking legislation with Article 6 of the ECHR.
• Ahmet and Mehmut Altan v Turkey – Representing a coalition of NGOs (including PEN International, ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch and Index on Censorship) in a third party intervention concerning persecution of journalists in Turkey

Eddie practises in all aspects of media and information law, with particular expertise in defamation, privacy, data protection, breach of confidence and reporting restrictions.  In 2017 Spears magazine identified him as one of two “Rising Star” lawyers in the field of reputation management. Eddie acted for the appellant in the Supreme Court in OPO (James Rhodes) v MLA (appeal against injunction prohibiting publication of a performing artist’s autobiography) and represented the Media Lawyers Association in the Supreme Court in Lachaux v Lachaux (landmark appeal concerning the serious harm threshold in s. 1 of the Defamation Act 2013). He is currently acting for Google in Lloyd v Google (an attempt to establish a representative action for compensation under the Data Protection Act on behalf of several million iPhone users – currently pending before the Supreme Court).

He has represented approximately 50 individuals in claims arising out of Operations Weeting, Pinetree and Golding (unlawful voicemail interception) and Operation Elveden (payment of corrupt public officials). He represented the former Crown servant, Christopher Steele, in libel proceedings concerning the publication of a confidential intelligence memorandum (Gubarev v Orbis & Steele). Between 2013-17, Eddie provided regular pre-publication advice to The Times, Sunday Times, Observer, the Guardian and BBC News.

Eddie has a broad criminal and regulatory practice with a particular focus on proceeds of crime, fraud and money laundering offences and cases with an international or corporate dimension. He has been instructed for the defence in international fraud and corruption prosecutions and advised a large investment bank on LIBOR fixing investigations. He has extensive experience of representing respondents to property freezing orders, unexplained wealth orders and civil recovery applications under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. He has advised and trained teams at global law firms on money laundering compliance and has produced AML risk assessments and policies for a range of regulated entities.

Eddie is a contributing author to Human Rights and Criminal Justice (3rd Ed, Sweet & Maxwell); Smith, Bodnar and Owen on Asset Recovery, Criminal Confiscation and Civil Recovery (OUP, 2nd Ed); Montgomery and Ormerod on Fraud: Criminal Law and Procedure; and Livingstone, Owen and Macdonald on Prison Law (OUP, 5th Ed); and the GIR Guide to Global Investigations.

Eddie has acted as a clerk to the Basketball Arbitral Tribunal on more than 20 cases and as an ad hoc clerk at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in more than 40 cases including:

• Caster Semenya v IAAF – Challenge to the lawfulness of the IAAF’s Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification (Athletes with Differences of Sex Development).
• Blake Leeper v IAAF – Appeal concerning regulations restricting the use of prosthetic running aids by amputee athletes who wish to compete against able-bodied athletes in international athletics competitions.
• Dutee Chand v IAAF – Appeal concerning regulations restricting the eligibility of female athletes with hyperandrogenism to compete in international athletics competitions.
• Alexander Legkov, Aleksander Zubkov & others v International Olympic Committee (IOC) – Appeals brought by more than 20 Russian athletes against findings they had engaged in systematic doping and covert sample swapping during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
• Harold Mayne-Nicholls v FIFA – Appeal brought by the former Chairman of the FIFA Bid Evaluation Group for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups against findings that he breached the FIFA Ethics Code by making improper requests to an organisation linked to the Qatari World Cup bid.
• Veronica Campbell Brown v IAAF– Appeal concerning irregularities in Jamaican anti-doping procedures.

In 2011/2012 Eddie spent a year as judicial assistant to Lord Clarke at the United Kingdom Supreme Court. Prior to this, Eddie spent nine months as a judicial assistant to Lady Justice Arden at the Court of Appeal.

Eddie is a former Lecturer in Administrative Law and European Human Rights Law at Oxford University and has taught on surveillance and fair trial issues on the postgraduate BCL course. Before joining Matrix, he spent several months working as a Stagiaire at the European Court of Human Rights. He is also a former trial observer for the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association.

Eddie holds a first class undergraduate law degree from Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. He undertook the Bar Vocational Course at the Inns of Court School of Law where he was graded ‘Outstanding’ and received the Everard Ver Heyden Foundation Prize for finishing in the top 5 in his year. Eddie later read for the Bachelor of Civil Law at Brasenose College, Oxford University, specialising in criminal justice, unjust enrichment and comparative public law. He received Distinctions in all subjects and won the Ralph Chiles CBE Prize for comparative human rights law. Eddie was awarded a Sunley Scholarship, Eastham Scholarship, Hardwicke Award and Buchanan Prize by Lincoln’s Inn.

• Conference Paper: Defamation Reform (1)
• Conference Paper: Defamation Reform (2)
• Publicity: The UK Perspective in The Practitioner’s Guide to Global Investigations