Extradition Watch is our campaign for fairer extradition laws.
Extradition is an important part of international criminal law, but
changes in recent years have damaged time-honoured protections against
unfair extradition.
The Extradition
Act (2003) streamlined the extradition process by side-stepping traditional
British justice. ‘Fast-track’ extradition is justice denied.
Why the law
needs to change- Someone should
not be extradited to another country for actions that are not criminal in
the UK
- A basic case should be
made to a British court before someone can be sent abroad to face trial in
another country
- If a significant part of
the conduct that led to the alleged crime took place in the UK, then a
British court should be able to decide if it is in the interests of
justice to extradite.
Find
out more about
extradition and read
our
case studies to see how
these laws affect real people.
Read about the case of Eileen Clark.
Please email your MP today
1.
Ask them to put pressure on the Government to schedule a motion to debate
bringing into force the ‘forum amendment’.
2.
Ask them to encourage the Government to implement our suggested safeguards to
UK extradition law.
What is the 'forum amendment'?In 2006 amendments were made to the Extradition
Act that would allow a UK
court to bar extradition (if appropriate) on the grounds that some or all the
alleged conduct had taken place in the UK. Yet these amendments have never
been brought into force. If a “forum bar” had been on the statute book, it
would have been possible for a UK
judge to halt the extradition of Gary McKinnon, Christopher Tappin and Babar Ahmad.
There is nothing to prevent the Government from activating this
amendment and changing the law to help protect future Garys. Find out more
about the
forum amendment.
Flight Warning
We
asked our supporters to send us their pictures of our Extradition Watch
paper plane (PDF) to
help show support for our campaign and Gary McKinnon's case, have a look at the
fantastic photos we received in our
Flight Warning gallery.