The Court of Appeal will hear a challenge to an order granting family court judges anonymity in high-profile proceedings.
Journalists Louise Tickle and Hannah Summers have won permission to appeal the decision of Mr Justice Williams, which prevented the media reporting the names of the judges involved in family proceedings relating to 10-year-old Sara Sharif.
Sara was brutally murdered by her father and stepmother after they were granted custody of her by the family court.
Tickle and Summers argued the decision was wrong in that ‘the demands of open justice meant that anonymity for a judge could not be justified within the framework of balancing article 8 and article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights’.
They also pointed out Mr Justice Williams failed to give reasons for his decision, and had not received any request for anonymity from the family court judges concerned.
In a decision on the permission to appeal, master of the rolls Sir Geoffrey Vos revealed Surrey County Council - which has been heavily criticised for the apparent failures of social services to identify the risks Sara faced from her parents - has taken no position on the application.
Sharif and his wife Beinash Batool, Sara’s father and stepmother, broadly oppose the application, Vos stated. On Tuesday both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with minimum terms of 40 years and 30 years respectively.
The MR ruled: ’I have decided to grant the journalists permission to appeal the highlighted part of the judge’s order on the grounds that the arguments advanced in their Appellants’ Notice and supporting skeleton argument have a real prospect of success. Moreover, the appeal raises questions that are of considerable public importance and it is in the public interest that the Court of Appeal considers them.’
The judge ordered the appeal to be expedited. A two-day hearing before the Court of Appeal will take place on 14 and 15 January before a three-judge panel.
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