Independent Counter Terrorism Commission: Meet The Commissioners

Rt. Hon. Sir Declan Morgan PC KC (Chair)

Sir Declan Morgan is a Supplementary Panel member of the UK Supreme Court. He was Senior Crown Counsel for Northern Ireland (2002-2004). He was appointed to the High Court in 2004, was chair of the Northern Ireland Law Commission (2007-9) and was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland (2009-2021).

Dr Mohammed Aziz

Dr Mohammed Aziz was Director of the Forum Against Islamophobia & Racism (2000-3), the British Muslim Research Centre (2003-5) and the Aziz Foundation (2015-18). He served as a Commissioner at the Commission for Racial Equality (2003-7), the Equal Opportunities Commission (2005-7) and was a Senior Advisor to the UK Government on Race, Faith & Integration (2004-11). As Director of the Centre for Policy and Public Education at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge (2012-15) he set up and led work on the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life. He is a Trustee at Muslim Aid and Demos.

Richard Barratt CMG OBE

Richard worked for the British Government in the Security Service, the Foreign Office and the Secret Intelligence Service. He has served in Canada, Jordan, Turkey, and at the United Kingdom Mission to the UN in New York. Richard subsequently worked at the UN as coordinator of the Al-Qai'da and Taliban Monitoring Team. He helped establish a system-wide UN working group on terrorism, which became the UN Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force following the adoption by the UN General Assembly of a Global Strategy to Counter Terrorism in September 2006. Within the Task Force, he led on radicalisation and de-radicalisation issues and on terrorist use of the Internet. He has been or remains a member of and adviser to the Boards of several institutions and foundations related to counter-terrorism, such as: The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (London), the Soufan Group (New York),The Global Center on Cooperative Security (Washington); the Middle East Institute (Washington); the Hiraal Institute (Somalia), the NEEM Foundation (Nigeria); the Centre for Research and Security Studies (Pakistan); The International Centre for Counter Terrorism (The Hague). and Women without Borders (Vienna).

Dr Katherine Brown

Dr Katherine Brown is a Reader in Religion and Global Security in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. Over the past decade, she has been researching the role of gender and religion in relation to extremism, and has an interest in gender-mainstreaming in countering and preventing violent extremism efforts. Her publications include Gender, Religion and Extremism: finding women in anti-radicalisation, Gender Mainstreaming Principles, Dimensions and Priorities in PVE; and, Gender Specific Approaches to EXIT work. Dr Brown has been an expert witness in court cases involving the radicalisation of women and children in the UK. (Photo by Paul Musso | Hay Festival)

Professor John Denham

Professor Denham is Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at Southampton University. He was an MP from 1992-2015. During the last Labour government he served as a Minister for 10 years including as Minister for State for Policing (2001-03) and Secretaries of State of Universities, Innovation & Skills (2007-09), and of Communities & Local Government (2009-10). He chaired the Home Affairs Select Committee (2003-07).

Sir Peter Fahy QPM

Sir Peter Fahy was Chief Constable of Cheshire (2002-08) and then Greater Manchester until his retirement in 2015. He was Vice President of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and their national lead for the Prevent counter-terrorist programme, race and diversity, and workforce development. He also serves on the staff for the University of Cambridge input to MCTP at the National Police Academy Hyderabad. He was a member of the Commission into the future of policing in Ireland and currently works with a number of UK charities including as Chair of Care of Police Survivors and Plus Dane Housing Association. He is the founder of the We Stand Together charity working on issues of community cohesion following terrorist attacks and the resettlement of refugees. In 2012 he was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen for services to policing

Rt. Hon. Dominic Grieve KC

Dominic Grieve served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield from 1997 to 2019. He was Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014 and was the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee from 2015 to 2019. He chaired the Citizen's Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life which published its report, The Missing Muslims: Unlocking British Muslim Potential for the Benefit of All, in July 2017

Murray Hunt

Murray is the Director of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law and a Visiting Professor in Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. He was a Legal Adviser to the Joint Committee on Human Rights (2004-2017). He led the Committee's long-running inquiry into Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights which produced many reports on the human rights compatibility of different aspects of counter-terrorism law and policy. He is the UK's alternate member of the Council of Europe's Venice Commission for Democracy through Law. In 2016, he was on the UK's national shortlist of 3 candidates submitted to the Council of Europe as candidates to become the UK Judge on the European Court of Human Rights. In 2018, he served as an expert adviser to the Equalities and Human Rights Committee of the Scottish Parliament in its inquiry into Human Rights and the Scottish Parliament and from 2019-21 he was an Independent Member of the Scottish National Taskforce for Human Rights Leadership. He is also a Bencher of the Middle Temple.

Alyson Kilpatrick

Alyson Kilpatrick is Chief Commissioner at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. She was a Human Rights Advisor to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and a special legal advisor to the UK's Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. She is Chair of the Board of the Simon Community Northern Ireland and a member of the Strategic Operational Board of One Safe Place Justice Centre.

Ravi Naik

Ravi is co-founder of the data rights agency, AWO and a leading solicitor in the field of data protection, data rights, and protecting human rights in a digital age. His work has led to numerous awards, including being named the Law Society's Human Rights Lawyer of the Year 2018 - 2019. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University's Internet Institute. Ravi is a member of the Law Society's Human Rights Committee, sits on the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, and is on the working group of the Ada Lovelace Institute's "rethinking data" programme. Prior to joining AWO, Ravi's practice encompassed national security matters, including leading cases before the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. That practice developed to focus on the use of technology in national security matters.

Dame Anne Owers

Dame Anne Owers is chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards. She was the Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (2012-2017), Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons (2001-2010), and chaired a review of prisons in Northern Ireland (2010-2011). She was a member of the advisory group to The Lammy Review of race and criminal justice. She was Director of Justice, the UK law reform and human rights organisation (1992-2001), and General Secretary of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (1986-1992). She currently chairs Koestler Arts, the prison arts charity.

Professor Hilary Pilkington

Hilary Pilkington is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. She is the coordinator of the H2020 project Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality, which considers the social origins and effects of radicalisation, focusing on young people and on both Islamist and anti-Islam(ist) (extreme right) radicalisations. Her publications include Loud and Proud: Passion and Politics in the English Defence League (2016). She served as an independent Commissioner on the Preventing Violent Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission set up by the Mayor of Greater Manchester in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombings.

The Rt. Hon. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi PC

Lady Warsi was appointed to the House of Lords in 2007 and to the Privy Council in 2010. She served as a Cabinet Minister from 2010-14 including as Minister for State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Minister of State for Faith and Communities (2012-2014). She is a former co-chair of the Conservative party. She is a visiting professor at St Mary's University, an Advisor to Georgetown University, Washington D.C, and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Bolton. She is the author of The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain.

Amanda Weston KC

Amanda Weston KC is a leading public law barrister who acts in complex, sensitive and contentious judicial review in a broad range of fields including national security and unlawful detention, citizenship and statelessness. Amanda co-authors Judicial Review: A Practical Guide (Lexis Nexis), is a contributor to Macdonald's Immigration Law and Practice and is a member of the 'A' Panel of Counsel who act for the Equality & Human Rights Commission.

Professor Lucia Zedner

Professor Lucia Zedner is a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, Professor of Criminal Justice in the Faculty of Law, and a member of the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of The British Academy and an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. She is a long-standing Conjoint Professor in the Law Faculty, UNSW, Sydney. She is also currently the President of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Study of Crime, Security and Law, Freiburg. Her research interests are primarily in criminal law and criminal justice, security, counter-terrorism, immigration control, and citizenship.

All commissioners are members of the Commission in a personal capacity and not as representatives of any organisations or institutions they are affiliated with.