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Rhys Davies, co-founder of IHR Advisors and a barrister at Temple Garden Chambers, has been ranked a Tier 2 Leading Junior for international human rights and criminal law at the London Bar in the Legal 500 UK Bar 2027 guide, published on 1 October 2026. Legal 500 gives its Leading Junior rankings to barristers with significant experience of key cases and strong market recognition, the juniors it regards as future candidates for silk.
The testimonial in this year’s guide is brief: ‘Exceptional intellect and work ethic.’ The editorial is more specific. It singles out Rhys’s work for Charles Ridley, a British businessman held in the United Arab Emirates since May 2008. Rhys secured a finding from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that Mr Ridley’s detention was arbitrary.
That finding, published in November 2025, is worth setting out. Mr Ridley finished his original sentence in November 2015 and should then have been freed. Instead, in May 2018, he was given a further 20-year term. He had no notice of the hearings, and his lawyer was not allowed to address the court. The Working Group held that Law No. 37 of 2009 had been applied to him retroactively and placed the case in Categories I and III. It called for his immediate release, compensation and an independent investigation. The UAE was invited to respond and did not. Rhys acted with Ben Keith. Both also act for Mr Ridley’s business partner, Ryan Cornelius, whose detention the Working Group found arbitrary in Opinion No. 19/2022.
The ranking continues a long run of recognition in the guide. In earlier editions Legal 500 has called Rhys ‘the go-to barrister for submissions to the United Nations in complex cases’ and ‘fearless in his defence of Human Rights and individual freedoms’.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is an independent body of experts that decides whether a person’s detention breaches international human rights law. Its opinions do not free anyone on their own. What they do is turn a family’s grievance into a formal finding against a state. Governments, parliaments and the press can cite that finding, and the detaining state has to answer it.
For British nationals held overseas, that is often the only legal lever available. The Foreign Office will raise a case, but it will rarely say in public that a friendly government is holding someone unlawfully. A UN opinion says it for them. It also changes what ministers can be asked to do next, including whether to impose Magnitsky-style sanctions.
Rhys takes the same approach across the rest of his practice. He is admitted to the lists of counsel at the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. He secured a judgment against Uganda before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights over torture and secret detention. He has also represented Uyghur activists subject to politically motivated INTERPOL notices. He is co-editor of Red Notice Monitor and co-author, with Ben Keith, of INTERPOL Law and Practice (Sweet & Maxwell, 2026).
We are grateful to the clients and colleagues who spoke to Legal 500 researchers this year. Rhys’s ranking can be read on the Legal 500 website.
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