Who is Kate Shemirani? Anti-vaxxer speech investigated over ‘Nuremberg’ cry
Former nurse has become face of the anti-vaccination movement
Scotland Yard is investigating a speech made during an anti-lockdown protest on Saturday that compared doctors and nurses with Nazis executed after the Second World War.
The address was made by a former nurse, Kate Shemirani, who told people at a Trafalgar Square rally to send her the details of NHS workers.
“Get their names. Email them to me. With a group of lawyers, we are collecting all that,” she said. “At the Nuremberg Trials, the doctors and nurses stood trial and they hung. If you are a doctor or a nurse, now is the time to get off that bus… and stand with us the people.”
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The Royal College of Nursing has called the remarks “reprehensible” and said they “could put nursing staff at risk”.
Face of anti-vaccination
Shemirani has “emerged as one of the most celebrated faces” of a movement that has “united anti-vaccination and anti-mask campaigners with far-left and far-right activists at demonstrations featuring speakers such David Icke and Piers Corbyn, the brother of the former Labour leader”, wrote The Jewish Chronicle, which investigated some of her claims last September.
She has “repeatedly compared NHS nurses to ‘Nazis’ for carrying out recognised medical procedures and vaccinations”, the newspaper found. She has also spread false conspiracy theories that the pandemic is not real, Covid-19 symptoms are actually down to 5G, and the coronavirus vaccine is a political tool to change people’s DNA.
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“They will be able to look at every aspect of what is going on in our brains. Not only can they pick it up, they can download into us,” she told the Daily Mail’s Barbara Davies, who described her claims that “no vaccine has ever been proven safe or effective” as “preposterous”.
Sitting down to interview Shemirani last September, Davies wrote that “on one level, she’s the epitome of conventional middle-classdom”, but at rallies she calls upon her “working-class roots”.
“The postman’s daughter from Nottingham, who left school before completing her A-levels, worked variously in a factory, a bar in Spain and in Argos and, after qualifying at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1984, supplemented her salary as a theatre nurse with modelling assignments. From 1990 to 1998 she worked as a long-haul BA air stewardess,” says Davies, who wonders if Shemirani has now become “the most dangerous woman in Britain”.
Nursing career over
Shemirani was struck off the nursing register by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in June after months of suspension for spreading misinformation. A fitness-to-practise panel determined that Shemirani was no longer a “safe or effective” practitioner, reported the Nursing Times.
It also concluded that her behaviour had fallen “seriously short of the standards expected of a registered nurse and amounted to misconduct”.
Despite the outcome of the case, Nursing Times said it had “learnt that Ms Shemirani plans to continue to call herself a nurse and wear her nurse uniform”.
At an interim NMC hearing last year, she claimed the nurses who made the accusations against her did so because they were overweight and jealous, reported The Times.
“The fact that I was always graced with decent looks and I’m always very slim and I’ve been very successful has generated a little bit of jealousy throughout my career,” she said.
Heartbreak at home
Last November, Shemirani’s 21-year-old son Sebastian spoke out publicly against his mother, describing to the BBC’s Marianna Spring in what she calls “heartbreaking detail” the breakdown of their relationship.
One of Shemirani’s four children, Sebastian said that he wished he could tell her followers that “my mum is not the person you think she is”. He continued that she was “someone with a massive amount of self-interest and loves being the centre of attention”.
“What she is doing is dangerous. This is her five minutes of fame,” he told the BBC.
He said it was “hell” growing up with her as a mother, as he was frequently exposed to conspiracy theories, and said she has come to see him as “part of the global plot”.
Shemirani did not respond directly to her son’s comments, but told the BBC: “From what I can see, it would appear a ‘conspiracy theorist’ is actually now anyone who believes something other than what your controllers want you to believe. I find this deeply disturbing.”
Police enquiries
Following her remarks at Saturday’s London protest, Sebastian told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: “She should be prosecuted under existing laws. Or if there are not laws in place that say what she is doing is illegal, we should be having a national conversation about what laws we should be bringing in and drafting up legislation for that. Because it’s only a matter of time before... somebody acts on the bad advice that she’s giving the country.”
The Metropolitan Police said officers were “carrying out enquiries to establish whether any offences have been committed”.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has said he hopes her speech will be “investigated and dealt with appropriately”. Asked by LBC if he thought her actions constituted a criminal offence, the former director of public prosecutions said: “Yes, it’s absolutely shocking.”
A spokesman for Boris Johnson said it was a matter for the police but that the prime minister believes “any violence, threats or intimidation is completely unacceptable”.