Fair Trials International submits plan for extradition reform

Human rights charity Fair Trials International has submitted a six-point plan to the Home Affairs Committee for reforming the UK’s extradition arrangements.

Many of the proposed changes have already been recommended by other in-depth extradition reviews that took place in 2011. According to Fair Trials, all can be achieved simply and quickly, and the impact for people facing extradition requests would be substantial if the reforms were enacted.

The six reforms are:

• no extradition until a case is trial ready, to prevent the many cases of premature extradition currently blighting the system;
• allow courts to seek further information from the requesting state before extradition (for example, when it needs to satisfy itself on identity or fundamental rights questions);
• give courts a back-stop power to refuse extradition where it would not be in the interests of justice because the requesting state is clearly not the appropriate forum;
• abolish means-testing for legal aid in all extradition cases, to prevent the delays, wasted costs and injustices caused by the current system;
• extend the fixed one-week deadline to appeal against extradition under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW), so that injustices caused by inflexibility in the current system are avoided; and
• allow British nationals or residents who are wanted under conviction EAWs to serve their sentence in the UK, to avoid the pointless expense of extradition followed by transfer back to a UK prison.