Rod Liddle in the Spectator on the rather one sided extradition process between the US and the UK.
I was reminded of the Noraid man’s contribution to the diverse lexicon of political humour by the recent travails of everybody’s favourite growling, hook-handed, fundamentalist Muslim, Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri. The incendiary sheikh is residing in Belmarsh prison awaiting extradition to the United States under this bizarre arrangement we now have with the Americans which seems to allow them to point the finger at British subjects and have them dragged stateside for trial — without the requirement of anything so irksome and tricksy as a burden of proof. It is, of course, strictly a one-way arrangement — as we shall see later.
And get this — it is only six weeks since a United States court decided that it would be unsafe to deport a certain Mr Kelly to Britain. He was implicated in the brutal, unforgettable murder of two British corporals at an IRA funeral. You remember the television pictures, don’t you? Well, he’s still enjoying freedom in the US because they don’t trust us to try the man fairly.
This came up in the Economist recently as well. The justification seems to be that the US Constitution expressly forbids extradition without prima facie evidence while we without a written constitution have no such protections. Once again, we are less free than our colonial cousins.
The one part of the piece that really disturbed me however was this:
Her client, meanwhile, sits in a cell in Belmarsh prison in his pyjamas because he has not been allowed to wear his usual clothes (robes which make it easy for him, with his disabilities, to move around). He cannot feed himself because the prison staff have removed his hooks.
Excellent, British Justice at its best! A man yet to be convicted of anything, thus innocent, is stripped of his protheses to the extent that he cannot feed himself, nor, presumably, have a drink of water. That such things should come to pass in the home of the jury trial, innocence before conviction and Magna Carta.
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