When the FBI Comes Calling…®
June 28 2006
Business circles angry at refusal of US to ratify deal
By Miranda Green in London, Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Attempts to achieve reciprocal extradition arrangements with the US have been frustrated by the refusal of the US Senate to ratify a treaty signed three years ago.
David Blunkett, home secretary at the time, and John Ashcroft, the US attorney- general, put their names to the new bilateral extradition agreement in March 2003 in Washington.
Both hailed the agreement, which makes it much easier for enforcement agencies to pursue suspects in the other jurisdiction by reducing the amount of evidence required for an extradition request, as "essential to our success in fighting crime that regularly crosses borders and continents".
In the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 2001, the ministers were cementing a close military and diplomatic alliance with regulations designed to help the two governments apprehend terrorists and the organised criminals who were funding them.
Since then, businesspeople, human rights groups and opposition parties have become angry that, because Britain has ratified the agreement but the US has not, UK citizens are at a disadvantage when being pursued by the US authorities.
They say the US has become much more proactive since the treaty was signed, with federal prosecutors using the UK's 2003 Extradition Act not to pursue terrorists but increasingly to tackle white-collar crime. Meanwhile, lobbying by Irish-American groups, worried the British would pursue suspected republican terrorists, has delayed ratification in the US.
The Bush administration asked the Senate for its consent in 2004 but the foreign relations committee, headed by Republican Senator Richard Lugar, has only held one hearing on the treaty last November and is scheduled to consider it again this year. There is no sense of urgency, even though the government of Tony Blair, the US's staunchest ally in the war on terror, is being harmed by their delay.
Fears that the government would use the measures for politically motivated arrests have led to harsh criticism by some human rights and special interest groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Irish Freedom Committee, which said the measure represented the "ushering in of British law in the US once again".
Douglas McNabb of McNabb Associates, a Washington-based law firm specialising in extradition law, said: "I do not see the US Senate any time soon giving approval to the new treaty because there's no reason for the US to do that."
On this side of the Atlantic, the case of the "NatWest three" has sparked protests by businesspeople, and a campaign in parliament. A low-key march by business leaders is planned in London tomorrow and the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are preparing to ambush the government after the summer recess.
The two parties are seeking to amend a Home Office bill dealing mainly with police matters, demanding there should be a presumption that crimes alleged to have been committed in the UK should be tried here.
The Home Office insists that although the government is keen for the US to ratify the treaty so internet crime and other new categories of offence are included in bilateral agreements, it is happy that the current deal offers British citizens sufficient protection.