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New UK-US Extradition Treaty

On 31 March, David Blunkett, UK Home Secretary, signed a new Extradition Treaty on behalf of the UK

with his United States counterpart, Attorney General Tom Ashcroft, ostensibly bringing the US into line

with procedures between European countries. The UK parliament was not consulted at all and the text

was not public available until the end of May. The only justification given for the delay was for

“administrative reasons”, though these did not hold-up scrutiny by the US senate, which began almost

immediately.

The UK-US Treaty has three main effects:

– (1) it removes the requirement on the US to provide prima facie evidence when requesting the

extradition of people from the UK but maintains the requirement on the UK to satisfy the “probable

cause” requirement in the US when seeking the extradition of US nationals;

– (2) it removes or restricts key protections currently open to suspects and defendants;

– (3) it implements the EU-US Treaty on extradition, signed in Washington on 25 June 2003, but far

exceeds the provisions in this agreement.

An analysis of the new UK-US Treaty – which will replace the 1972 UK-US Treaty – follows below,

together with a number of relevant cases and issues that raise serious concern about the new

agreement (and those between the EU and US).

Source pdf