Extradition

Ali

This came up in another thread about Garry McKinnon who hacked 97 American military and NASA computers. It seems that more people are extradited to the US from the UK than the other way. I thought I would investigate this a bit more. This is what I found. Since 2001 the US has had 97 people extradited form the UK while it has been 38 the other way. Considering the population of the US is 5 times the UK this seems a bit lop sided. The test for whether someone should be extradited is much weaker in the UK i.e. in the UK you must demonstrate “reasonable suspicion” while in the US it is “ probable cause”. ie the US protects its citizens more with a higher legal threshold. The numbers are apparently the way they are because there are more American fugitives in the UK than British Gangsters in the US ! Lots of changes in law in 2003 has brought this about. Apparently it is possible to be extradited from the UK to another EU country even if the alleged crime is not illegal in the UK. ie Poland has a strict law on abortion, so in theory if an abortion took place in the UK that broke the Polish law extradition can take place.

injoke

what we need is a for a politician to put the rad back in extradition.

David

Why do we continually bend over for the US? Is it simply business? I'm not up on the real reasons we maintain the special relationship.

underscore_cue

I was having a conversation about just this recently, and basically apart from the business angle, the military is dependant on US technology, especially for the really "bad" weapons. The UK developed their own A-bomb and then went on to drop the program in favour of adopting the US version and effectively twinning the command structures of the two armed forces. (this is mentioned on a documentary about the British A-bomb that was BBC iplayer recently) Without regular maintenance by US personnel based in the UK using equipment manufactured and maintained in the US, the nuclear deterant (inc. Trident) wouldn't work and the UK would have to start again from scratch. Apart from Trident (launched from the sea) the actual missiles on UK soil are on military bases controlled by the US.. (not unique, the US do the same with their other satellites) This continues to this day, there was a document leaked to private eye a couple of years after the 2003 Iraq invasion which showed internal US military plans with 3 scenarios: broad coalition of international forces, loose coalition of close allies, and unilateral invasion force. The unilateral one had some British units in it.