COURTS SWAMPED BY TRIVIAL EUROPEAN DEMANDS

Michael Turner, businessman extradited and imprisoned but has not been charged

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH - MICHAEL HOWIE

British courts are being flooded with hundreds of trivial cases as a result of Europe's extradition laws, according to a damning report.

The high volume of requests is placing an "unjustified burden" on police and prisons, the campaign group Fair Trials International (FTI) will warn. Its report, which will be submitted this week to a Government review of extradition, calls for sweeping changes to the operation of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) system.

British citizens who have fallen foul of the system include a businessman who spent four months in a Hungarian prison but has never been charged with an offence, and a grandmother who endured repeated arrests before her extradition case was eventually thrown out.

The report is the most detailed critique of the EAW system since it was introduced in 2004.