Britannia Radio

EU extradition on demand undermines justice 

By Alasdair Palmer

14/09/2008

"Osama bin Laden has done more for European integration than anyone since Jacques Delors," says Graham Watson, the Lib Dem MEP. His claim sounds perverse - until you remember how persuasive the threat of terrorism has been in getting countries to accept pan-European steps to "integrate procedures for criminal justice". Supporters of ever-closer integration on matters of criminal justice insist that those who oppose it are "weakening the fight against terrorism". Their argument has been very effective. Just how effective can be gauged from a measure passed by the European Parliament two weeks ago, which our own Government has just endorsed.  The new law would mean that no member state could refuse to extradite an individual sought by another member state - even if that individual had been given a heavy prison term after a trial at which he was not present, could not defend himself, and may not even have known about. Isn't the right to defend yourself in person essential to a fair trial - and isn't that right so basic that it is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights? Well, yes - but as the preamble to the new regulation states, the right itself is "not absolute". So EU bureaucrats, lawyers and parliamentarians have concluded that it can be dispensed with when doing so increases "efficiency". And indeed, it is unquestionably very inefficient to have all those pesky protections for people who are accused of crimes. They prevent the state from convicting people swiftly and cheaply. So the new EU regulation will sweep them all away: if you are found guilty in absentia by a court in another EU state, our Government will have no option but to extradite you to serve your prison sentence there. That measure would be a threat to the liberty of law-abiding Britons even if every EU country had uniformly high standards of justice. No trial in absentia can be fair, and the procedure can only be justified as a last, desperate response to the most exceptional and severe conditions. The EU regulation, however, places no significant conditions at all on trials in absentia: the "safeguards" which it is claimed will prevent miscarriages of justice can all be satisfied by ticking boxes. Furthermore, the idea of "common standards of justice" across the EU is a bureaucratic fantasy. Standards vary enormously across Europe: the courts in some of the former Eastern bloc countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, do not observe the same protections for those accused of crimes as courts in Britain. A study by the EU itself found that corruption in Romania is rife, and that the "Romanian anti-corruption effort keeps evaporating". Bulgaria is the only member state that claims that it has implemented "100 per cent of all EU directives" - a claim that has as much credibility as the Communist claim that the Party won "100 per cent of the vote". Fair Trials International, a charity that reports on the standards of justice prevalent in other countries, has investigated the case of a Briton who was on holiday in Romania in 2004 and found himself being charged with having sexual relations with a minor. He was detained in Romania on that charge for three months. His alleged victim could not be traced and did not appear or give evidence at any court hearing. In November 2004, he was released and required to leave Romania within five days - which he did. In March 2007, he received an email from the British embassy in Romania informing him that the Romanian courts had held a trial which had convicted him in absentia of sexual abuse. The court had sentenced him to seven years in prison - a sentence that had been confirmed on appeal. The Romanian government issued a European Arrest Warrant, and the British man was sent back to Romania. After another trial which lasted less than one hour, and at which the alleged victim was again not present, the seven-year sentence was confirmed. The Briton is now in prison in Romania - where he will stay until he has served his sentence. That case is not a piece of spurious anti-EU propaganda: it actually happened. Not one of the EU's existing "guarantees" made the slightest difference - and the new law would sweep away even those. Fair Trials International has several more such cases, including one where a British citizen discovered he had been convicted of grievous bodily harm and given a prison sentence by a court in Germany only when a prospective employer did a Criminal Records Bureau check on him. There is almost no concerted opposition to the EU's new proposal. Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, has insisted that the new law will reinforce "a fundamental cornerstone of British justice". If she is right, then "British justice" is being transformed, under the bogus rubric of "combating the threat of terrorism", into a system that has all the protections and all the integrity of the Romanian or Bulgarian variety. When that happens, it will not be a victory over terrorism: it will be an example of it.