Omagh lawyer with an A-list defence

He has just won a landmark court case for the Omagh bombing victims, and has al-Qaida and Libya in his sights. On days off he hangs out with Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Jason McCue talks to Esther Addley
Jason McCue, solicitor for the Omagh families
Jason McCue, solicitor for the Omagh families Photograph: Graham Turner

The first thing Jason McCue did on Tuesday after landing back in London was to take his three-year-old son Danny to his tennis lesson. "Yeah, he's useless! It made me laugh. He got a medal for it as well! I said, 'Why did you get a medal?' And he said, 'Dunno dad, it's cool though isn't it?' I said 'Yeah, cool.' There's obviously something wrong with kids' training these days, they just give them things. I don't quite see ... "

He doesn't see the point in getting prizes if you don't win? He grins, a big, boyish, bear-like grin. "No. No, I don't."

His flight, as it happens, was from Belfast, where McCue had just won a landmark victory at the high court that he believes will completely change the legal possibilities for victims of terrorists in Britain and internationally. Four men - Liam Campbell, Seamus Daly, Colm Murphy and Michael McKevitt - were found liable for the Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people in August 1998, and ordered to pay more than £1.6m in damages to the victims and their relatives.

Though the families are unlikely to receive any payments without further lengthy court cases, and have always insisted the money was less important than the principle, the judgment means that, in theory at least, the four men could find themselves losing their homes and paying a proportion of their earnings for life to the Omagh victims. McCue believes an appeal by the families to the House of Lords could change the law on "punitive" damages - likely to run into the high millions - which at present are not recognised under English law.

McCue and a small handful of colleagues have been working on the case for nine years and he confesses to great relief that it's over, along with a well-earned measure of pride. "At the moment, everywhere you look is negative news. We've had this financial thing where all the bankers are screwing the hell out of us. We've got the politicians cheating on us. And all of a sudden these few little humble people who have lost their kids, have managed to go through the rule of law and beat a terrorist organisation, which was something the police forces couldn't do. I think that's a really good fucking thing at the moment."

There are lawyers who weigh their words carefully, who are guarded when talking to journalists, and then there's McCue. Blond and stubbled and just turned 40 - "I'm still young, you cheeky bugger!" - he looks younger, and has the Tiggerish enthusiasm of a pre-teen, even as he's rattling through subjects like how to defeat al-Qaida ("It's like a brand, it's competing for media coverage like Coca-Cola's brand. And if you're fighting a brand, you've got to show the brand's crap") and the best way to go about making peace in Africa. He bounces around his subjects like a squash ball.

McCue started out as a media and libel solicitor, and still acts in the area - he represented John Leslie as he sought to clear his name following failed indecent assault charges - but moved into terrorism cases after successfully defending the Sunday Times in 1998 from defamation charges brought by the former IRA chief of staff, Thomas "Slab" Murphy. "The IRA were using the civil law, and I thought, why is no one using it back?" Shortly afterwards he was approached by Victor Barker, a solicitor whose son James was killed at Omagh.

A decade on, McCue has, in the words of one commentator, "patented the Omagh brand" of civil suits against terrorists, and marketed it around the world. In the US, he has lodged a multi-billion dollar writ on behalf of 143 families against Libya, over IRA bombs in the 1980s and 90s that relied on support from Libya. In the next six months, his case against Arab Bank will go to court in the US, on behalf of 6,000 victims of the second intifada, alleging that the bank compensated suicide bombers and their families. He's been advising victims of the 7/7 attacks in London over their rights, and victims of Mumbai. "The thing is, when someone goes to see their lawyer after the next disaster - which there will be, sadly - the lawyer won't be able to say it's not possible. And that's quite nice, that's quite satisfying. I like that." He's beaming now, behind yellow-tinted glasses. "That's a great thought. That makes me happy."

The odd thing about McCue, however, is that despite his high legal profile, the law accounts for only a part of his public persona. "My wife", or "M", whom he mentions constantly throughout our interview, is the journalist and presenter Mariella Frostrup (they also have a four-year-old daughter, Molly), and through her A-list connections, McCue has come to know a comically dazzling clutch of uber-celebrities. When he is not in the press with the bereaved Omagh families, he's being pictured dining with the Browns at No 10 or on George Clooney's yacht in Lake Como with his wife and their stellar friends.

I ask if he ever finds his life a little surreal. "I don't see anything odd about it. I treat your George Clooneys and Brad Pitts just the same as I treat any of the [Omagh] families, I can absolutely assure you ... I don't go up to them and ask them for their autograph or talk about their films. We talk about Darfur, we talk about jokes, we talk about who we are going to water balloon when they come through the door."

Some of his clients have been uncomfortable with his celebrity life, he admits, but as a small-town boy from Warrington, raised in humble circumstances, he insists he has an outsider's perspective on "big city" fame and power, and a subsequent lack of deference. I'm not sure he's quite as relaxed with it all as he insists, but if he is understandably defensive about how little his head has been turned by hanging with "Jagger" and the like, he certainly lacks the born-to-it sense of entitlement of many caught up in the celebrity orbits. Instead there is a faintly gauche, and rather likable, lack of cool about his famous pals.

It has been useful to him, he freely admits - most notably, perhaps, in 2005 when McCue was unable to get John Packwood, a client accused of drug smuggling, out of jail in Morocco. Discovering that the country's king was a fan of Clooney's, McCue asked the star to write to him. Packwood was pardoned.

"Well look, you're doing a case, and in front of you you have your toolbox. Like a plumber. And luckily, in my toolbox, over there in the corner, I have this little washer, which 99 out of 100 times you would never use, but you've got it there in your box. And sometimes it's the perfect little thing. And you ring him up and say, George, I've got this problem, I'll send him a briefing pack. He'll take a look: 'Jesus this is fucking outrageous! Use that washer!'"

It was Clooney (McCue's kids call him "Uncle George") who inspired him to direct his lifetime interest in Africa into hands-on engagement with Darfur. Despite his legal obligations, McCue maintains he has spent 50% of his time in the past two years working on Darfur - "I've been putting the peace process together there. I don't think I was ever wanting to sit and do straight legal matters."

He approached the Sudanese-born, British billionaire philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, whose foundation promotes good government in the continent, and together they formulated Mandate Darfur, a plan to bring together representatives of civil society in the region to agree a document "which they could hold up to the government and the rebels and say, you say you represent us, you stick by our mandate". It was scheduled for mid-May - "We had 20-odd ex-presidents of Africa coming. All the right Darfuris, all the right celebrities, it was beautiful" - but cancelled at the last minute, when Sudan would not allow delegates into Addis Ababa.

Needless to say, they are trying again. Today he has a meeting to discuss whether they should try to get the project going in Somalia too.

Where does his self-belief come from?

"That's what I don't understand. My wife laughs at me all the time: where the hell do you get that optimism from? I don't know. I haven't got a clue. But there is definitely something wrong with me, because I do. I can literally watch something, and then next minute I'll be writing this, going off to see this, then I'm speaking at this, and it all spirals out of control, and I look back and think, what the hell am I doing?"

Plus, I'm guessing, he bores easily. "I do get bored really easily. Oh, really easily. Yeah yeah yeah, I'm terrible for that. Totally." And he's off again, on a tale about meetings in Damascus, Cyprus, Cairo, celebrity currency, campaigning strategies.