Overarching and overreaching anti-terrorism laws seem to be all the rage these days. Well, communism is dead and we’ve got to have something to panic over or we’d all die of boredom. So when the US told it’s Neo-Labour servants to enact laws to get Al Queda extradited without any of that pesky prima-facie nonsense, they passed a bill so quickly they got paper cuts.
And of course they wouldn’t ask for reciprocity because “… The US constitution prevents extradition without an evident prima-facie case…”, and US politicians don’t trust our definition of terrorist (the IRA were freedom fighters in many US marginal constituencies) so they wouldn’t ratify it and most importantly because it would not have been respectful.
Now of course this act of sycophancy is starting to bite: three UK Bankers face being hoiked off to the US to face charges related to Enron. They can’t make a proper defence over there because they will be in jail without bail and with all their resources evidence and witnesses in the UK. All on matters that could as easily have been tried in the UK. Mysteriously the CPS have decided not to show any interest in the case. Co-incidence it is, of course, that it would foil the extradition.
More evidence that if you take part in a legislative orgy with lots of sexy young anti-terrorist laws you meet in a bar you risk giving your citizens a nasty rash later. But hell, that’s their problem, eh? You’d use protection.
[…] We’ve seen that it is acceptable to extradite UK citizens to face the wrath of American justice even if they have a legitimate defence to offer to the UK courts. Even if they have the bare faced cheek to say to the foreign government “show us your evidence before we dispatch our people to you“. […]
Not sure if you watch PMQ’s, Geeklawyer, but some great question dodging from a certain person on this issue yesterday….
The Prime Minister: “I do not accept that the rights of British citizens are subject to unfairness. I am very sorry to have to say this to the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Liberal Democrats, but I sometimes wish that they would spend a little of the effort that they put into attacking the United States on understanding why these international terrorism issues are so important, and why it is important that we stand with our allies in defeating global terrorism. [Interruption.] People can say what they like about it, but I am also entitled to say what I like about it. I find the uneven way that the Liberal Democrats always express themselves on this issue—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I find it an affront, given what people are facing right round the world: a global terrorism that I would have thought we could unite against and defeat.”