BRITAIN’S TOUGH EXTRADITION LAWS FACE A SHAKE-UP

Deborah Dark

THE ECONOMIST

Extradition used to be a slow, costly and fiddly procedure that made life lucrative for lawyers and safer for wrongdoers. European integration and international terrorism have swung the pendulum the other way: Britain’s extradition regime is now widely regarded as unfairly burdensome on the innocent.

Fair Trials International, a lobby group, has a dossier of startling cases including that of Deborah Dark, a British woman who has been hounded by an EAW. She was arrested in France in 1989 on drug charges, acquitted, but later convicted in absentia (and without knowing it) after prosecutors appealed. In 2005 France issued a warrant, leading to Ms Dark being repeatedly arrested on assorted holidays and in Britain.