Noor: Public interest in post
A barrister who tweeted support for proscribed terrorist group Hezbollah has been cleared of misconduct by a disciplinary tribunal.
In what was a “finely balanced” decision, it said [1] the post by Ousman Noor did not cross the threshold of being “seriously offensive” given the international debate at the time around the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) actions.
During his evidence, Mr Noor retracted the suggestion in an earlier statement that the Bar Standards Board (BSB), in bringing the proceedings, was acting as “an enforcer of Zionist demands”.
Mr Noor, who was called in 2010, practised at Garden Court Chambers and then Kings Cross Barristers [2], specialising in immigration and human rights law among other areas.
He moved to Geneva in 2019, where he worked as a UN lobbyist for an international disarmament campaign called ‘Stop Killer Robots’ and then in December 2024 to Jordan, where his wife was a senior Palestinian diplomat. He is now back in the UK.
He is the founder and co-ordinator of Protect Palestine, an international campaign which advocates for military intervention against Israel.
In June 2024, while in Jordan, Mr Noor posted on X: “After 14 years of working in human rights law & peace building in London & Geneva, I have no hesitation in saying: Hezbollah is justified, both legally and morally, to use military force to destroy the IDF and I wish them every success.”
This was viewed more than three-quarters of a million times.
About 14 and a half hours later, he published a much longer post, in which he clarified the basis of his views and stated that his support was “for the specific act of targeting & destroying the IDF, which is Hezbollah’s legal right, and should not be equated with support for Hezbollah as an entity in itself”.
The focus of the tribunal – which was chaired by Zoe O’Sullivan KC – was on the initial post. Mr Noor said it was one of many he had posted since October 2023 on the issue and that he consciously distinguished between the IDF and the State of Israel.
Mr Noor said he no longer held the view that military action by Hezbollah or anyone else “is the answer to the question of how to stop the genocide. I wish only to see an end to violence, destruction and civilian suffering on all sides”.
The tribunal found that the “hypothetical ordinary reasonable reader” would read the tweet as expressing support for Hezbollah – and not simply, as Mr Noor contended, for its aims or outcomes.
“It is not simply expressing an objective which is shared by Hezbollah, but supporting the very entity which is to carry out the action of using military force,” it said.
The fact that Mr Noor clarified his position in the second post indicated that he appreciated this.
But for a tweet comprising political speech to amount to professional misconduct, it must be “seriously” offensive or discreditable.
The BSB accepted that, if Mr Noor had limited himself to expressing an opinion that Hezbollah had the legal right to use military force to destroy the IDF, that would not be seriously offensive.
But it argued that the reference to moral justification, together with the expression of support, took it over the threshold.
The tribunal concluded: “Some readers will undoubtedly have been offended by that expression of opinion while others will have agreed with it.
“On the other hand, the tribunal bears in mind that the initial post was posted in the context of an active public debate about the actions of the IDF in Gaza and Lebanon and about the legality of the use of armed force to resist the IDF.
“There was a public interest in a contribution by a lawyer with human rights experience to that debate, even if some readers would have found it provocative. The initial post did not use abusive or derogatory language.
“The tribunal also accepts Mr Noor’s submission that members of the public do not expect barristers to have uniform political views and the BSB’s concession that they do not expect barristers to be nice and inoffensive to everybody.
“The tribunal finds the issue to be finely balanced but has ultimately reached the conclusion that, weighing up all the circumstances, the initial post does not cross the threshold of being ‘seriously offensive’.”
It was also not likely to diminish the trust and confidence placed by a hypothetical reasonable member of the public in the Bar or of Mr Noor as a barrister.
The BSB said last week that the number of complaints about barristers’ use of social media more than doubled [3] to 279 in 2025-26, of which 192 related to the Israel and Palestine conflict.