Britannia Radio

29 January 2010 7:05 PM

Five-star ethnic profiling

The Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, is wondering on his blog if he was ethnically profiled at Ben Gurion Airport. Four times security guards asked him the question, 'What is the origin of your surname, please?' He says: 'I suspect it's because mine is one of those names that might be Hebrew or might be Arabic (As a matter of fact, it's neither: it's Irish.) I am, in other words, being ethnically profiled.' Being a sensible man, he was't much bothered.

Indeed, the name Hannan is -- in a phrase the poet Edmund Spenser used -- 'as Irish as O'Hanlon's breech.' But being Irish and not Arab hasn't always been a 'get out of jail free' card. Back in the mid-1980s, when things were still pretty warlike in the north of Ireland, those of us with Irish names -- or in another phrase used by Spenser, those of us from County Cork who had names which were 'degenerate English' -- often underwent ethnic profiling.

The best ethnic incident was when my managing editor at the Daily Telegraph, after I'd been on the paper for four years, heard someone say I was Irish. The managing editor, now dead, called me to his office and demanded I produce my passport. He went red with anger that he hadn't realised he's hired an Irish journalist -- and, worse, had actually once sent me and my green passport to report from Belfast. Gosh, that moment was fun.

Ethnic profiling didn't much bother me then; nor would it now. But it did once lead to an absurd bit of Special Branch pantomime.

One August in the 1980s I was on my own, taking my car -- a small, cheap, old, rusty Fiat with Irish registration -- from the English coast over to France. As I drove into the place on the quayside where the cars line up for the ferry, I showed my passport to the man in the booth, and joined one of the long lines, nose to tail, side by side, of the couple of hundred cars waiting to drive on board.

Then I noticed in the rear view mirror a small swarm of men in jackets and ties rushing through the lines of cars, looking for something. The swarm stopped at my car: they were looking for me. It was the usual police security formation, one at the back, one at the passenger door, one at my window asking to see my passport again.

'Where are you going?' I answered: 'Deauville.'

'How long will you be staying?' Two weeks, I said.

The special branch man looked at my car, contemplated the idea of this disgrace going to the French resort which is known as the 21st arrondisement of Paris, and asked what would be my address there.

'Hotel Royal,' I said. The officer seemed to know enough to know that there are two flash hotels on the seafront at Deauville, the Normandy and the Royal. He didn't seem too convinced that this Paddy was going to drive this car -- which even then may have needed a push to get it on the ferry -- to the front door of the Royal, toss the keys to the doorman -- then possibly nod Hello to Omar Sharif, who was staying at the Royal and playing an awful lot of bridge in Deauville in those days -- and take a room.

'What is your reason for going to Deauville?'

Answer: 'I will be a guest of the Cartier Polo Team.'

The officer gave me a long, long stare and I was waiting for him to say, 'Right, out of the car, and no more of your Republican back-chat.' But he just kept staring in silence. Then the other cars started up, and he waved me on.

I really didn't mind in the slightest. I don't think the Special Branch man enjoyed it much, though.

French justice is EU justice is bent justice

Yesterday Dominique de Villepin, the former French Prime Minister and current political rival to Nicholas Sarkozy, was cleared by three French judges of a conspiracy in 2004 to destroy Sarkozy's career by linking him to illegal arms dealing. De Villepin walked out of court 'not guilty.'

Within hours, Jean-Claude Marin, the state prosecutor, announced he intends to appeal the 'not guilty' verdict. He rejects the acquittal and intends to force de Villepin to undergo a second trial.

As de Villepin has already pointed out, the prosecutor is under 'the hierarchical authority' of the justice minister and the president: in other words, Sarkozy has engineered the appeal by the prosecutor. 'The decision in a political decision,' he says, motivated by Sarkozy's hatred of him.

The hatred is certain. Just days after the month-long trial opened, the president went on television and referred to de Villepin and the other defendants as 'guilty.' In Britain, that sort of political interference could result in a mistrial -- not to mention a prosecution for contempt of court.

Any decision to force a second trial -- what then, with another 'not guilty' verdict, a third trial? -- would clearly be unjust. But for us it is a handy decision. It illuminates just what passes for justice in France, the model for the 'euro-justice' under whose power the Lisbon Treaty has put us all.

Cut your way through the thickets of the treaty and you will see that, among many other things, the EU's 'Judicial Cooperation Unit,' Eurojust -- yes, I know, you've never heard of it -- will gain the power to initiate investigations of British subjects and order arrests. All British vetoes in all areas of police and judicial cooperation are to be abolished. The treaty allows for the creation of a European Public Prosecutor -- Monsieur Marin, perhaps -- who could prosecute British subjects, indeed, prosecute them again and again. And more, and worse.

Go through de Villepin's complaints against the second prosecution and you will note that there is no complaint against double jeopardy. Prosecutor Marin's rejection of de Villepin's acquittal shows that the system of what passes for justice on the Continent does not include a prohibition against double jeopardy: a man who has walked from a court with a 'not guilty' verdict can be tried straight away again on the same charge.

Of course, the ghastly Tony Blair did introduce double jeopardy in murder prosecutions in Britain (and he was wrong to do so). But even then, a second trial must depend on new evidence. Not in France, it seems. A man who is cleared of a charge by the courts can be taken straight back in on the same charge, with the same evidence, and be tried again, even if the charges are, as they seem to be in the de Villepin case, being manipulated by the servants of the President (or, The Dwarf, the name by which the willowy and well-bred Villepin dismisses the 5 feet 5 inch immigrant-offspring Sarkozy).

Any Briton can find himself in danger of being extradited to France and face just such double jeopardy, such serial prosecution, because the European law embraced by the Government gives virtually no protection against extradition to any EU jurisdiction.One can guess that British businessmen may be in particular danger of facing such charges as de Villepin did, linked as they were to names on a bank account.