Executive Directors
Saul Lehrfreund MBE and Parvais Jabbar are co-founders and joint Executive Directors of the Death Penalty Project, based at Simons Muirhead & Burton solicitors in London. They are leading experts in the area of human rights and the death penalty.
“If anyone is to be congratulated for excellent legal work furthering the cause of human rights, it should be Simons Muirhead & Burton for the Death Penalty Project,” declared one market authority. Founded by Simons Muirhead solicitors, the Death Penalty Project is an independent NGO with a connected charity that represents individuals facing the death penalty in the Caribbean and Africa. The team is “head and shoulders above anyone else” in death penalty-related work, and Parvais Jabbar and Saul Lehrfreund are heralded as “the outstanding experts.”
Saul Lehrfreund MBE LLD(Hon) has been running the project since its inception in 1992. In November 2000 he was awarded an MBE for services to international human rights and in July 2009 he received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Law from the University of Reading. He specialises in constitutional and international human rights law and has represented prisoners under sentence of death, inter alia, before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
In 1995, The Death Penalty Project won the category of “best pro bono activity” at the inaugural ‘UK Lawyer Awards’, and in the same year Saul received an individual award from the International Bar Association for his contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights. In 1999, he and Parvais Jabbar were joint winners of the Times/Justice Young Lawyer of the Year award.
Saul is a founder member of the British Foreign Secretary’s Death Penalty Panel and he also provides legal assistance to British prisoners facing the death penalty as a member of the Pro Bono Panel of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. He has been invited to participate in a number of international delegations on the death penalty and in June 2005 he was appointed as the UK nominated representative at the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue Seminar held in Beijing. In 2009 he was invited to join The Times Law Panel. He has published and lectured extensively on capital punishment and human rights; for information about some of his papers, see further under Publications on this website.
Parvais Jabbar specialises in domestic and international human rights law as it relates to the death penalty. He has represented prisoners under sentence of death before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He has assisted local lawyers in appeals before the Supreme Courts of Uganda, Kenya and Malawi in constitutional cases concerning the death penalty.
Parvais is a founder member of the Pro Bono Panel of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office providing assistance to prisoners facing the death penalty. He has assisted UK prisoners in Nigeria and Ghana and has been involved in international delegations looking into death penalty reform both in China and Taiwan. He has also lectured on death penalty issues to a wide range of audiences including lawyers, students and the public.
In 1999 he and Saul Lehrfreund were joint winners of the Times/Justice Young Lawyer of the Year award. In 2008 he was the recipient of the Pro Bono Lawyer of the Year award by the Society of Asian Lawyers.