| | The European Court of Human Rights has ordered a halt to the extradition of four British men, including Babar Ahmad, Abu Hamza, Talha Ahsan and Haroon Aswat.
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The court ruled that the men are 'at real risk' of being held in a US 'super max' prison for life, if convicted. The Court said the men's cases 'raised serious questions of fact and law which were of such complexity that the Court had to examine them on the merits.'
The family of Babar Ahmad, who - along with Mr Ahsan - is accused of 'various felonies including providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill, kidnap maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country', have put out a press release:
'We, the family of Babar Ahmad, are very pleased with today's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Babar's extradition should be temporarily frozen due to deep concerns it has regarding possible "cruel and unusual punishment" of Babar if sent to the United States.'
Separately, the Independent published an interview with Babar Ahmad, now the longest serving prisoner held without charge or trial in the UK. Asked about the case against him, Mr Ahmad responds:
'The central US allegations against me revolve around a family of websites that provided news in nearly 20 languages on Chechen resistance fighters who were defending their land against the Russian Army's invasion of Chechnya in the 1990s. According to the US, this was terrorism [The Home Office says Mr Ahmad is accused of providing material support to terrorists]. But according to UK this was, and still is, legal as Chechen resistance fighters have never been proscribed as a terrorist organisation, unlike al-Qa'ida. In fact, the leader of the Chechen resistance has been living in the UK for several years, having been granted asylum.
'The US claims jurisdiction because it is alleged that one of the several dozen computer servers on which the websites were hosted was located in the US for approximately 18 months from early 2000. The US accepts that the websites were also hosted on computer servers around the world and that "at all times material to the indictment" I was living in the UK. Other peripheral allegations against me are that a US naval battleship plan document was allegedly seized from me in December 2003. The media raised uproar about this document when I was arrested on the extradition warrant. However, in a letter to Sadiq Khan MP, the former Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith wrote that it could not even be proven that it was in my possession. Another document seized from my parents' house was a tourist brochure (belonging to my father) of the Empire State Building in New York, which prompted the media to report "al-Qa'ida planned to attack Empire State Building". That brochure is dated 1973, which is when my father visited New York. What is more incredible is that UK police returned this brochure to my father after I was arrested on the extradition warrant, yet it still forms part of the evidence against me.'
Readers will recall that Mr Ahmad won a case against the Metropolitan police for 'gratuitous and prolonged abuse' in December 2003, at the time of his arrest.
That the US-UK extradition treaty allows the UK to extradite any individual to the US without the need for the US to provide prima facie evidence is a serious erosion of the rights of UK nationals. The presumption of innocence and a trial by jury is a fundamental right, set out in the Magna Carta of 1215. The extradition treaty however completely betrays this basic right, given that suspects face incarceration without evidence and have no right to a trial.
Research suggests that the UK is more likely to extradite suspects to the US than American judges are to allow US citizens to be extradited to the UK for trial.
Presenting the case against extradition to the US, Gareth Pierce writes:
'No assurances at all, fragile or not, are on offer to protect against the threat that extraditees, even if acquitted, might be subjected to rendition or indefinite detention, or the grim reality of solitary confinement in a small sealed prison cell before and after trial, or against sentences that could amount to a hundred years. No assurances against the threat that any or all of these possibilities might induce guilty pleas from the innocent as well as a promise to ‘co-operate’ in providing evidence with which to prosecute others. More than one extraditee still in the UK has been visited by a US prosecutor armed with a copy of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. These sentences, of more than any man’s natural life expectancy are, the prisoners are told, ‘the facts of life’. The lawyers of Gary McKinnon (alleged to have hacked into the Pentagon computers), offered the opportunity of a guilty plea, were told that should he refuse, once in America he would ‘fry’. More than 90 per cent of trials in the US are resolved by guilty pleas, an extraordinary statistic that is undoubtedly a result of the defendants’ apprehension of what lies ahead – not just for the ‘worst of the worst’ – and their desire to avoid, at any cost, the risk of US law’s most extreme application.'
Moreover supranational jurisdiction was extended last year when the UK signed up to an arrest warrant scheme under Schengen Information II. The law, which came into effect this year, means that hundreds of Britons in receipt of a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) will be extradited for minor misdemeanours such as driving offences.
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