European Court of Human Rights
As a last-minute surprise, BoJo hands the EU the keys to UK security so Brussels will have total control
Here is the evidence, in The Express, in the Daily Mail and, from the horse’s own mouth, here. In a nutshell, yesterday HMG answered Lord Pearson’s question as follows:
“1 December 2020: There is no intention for extradition to any EU jurisdiction after the end of transition period to be made subject to a court ruling that there is a prima facie case.”
This means that HMG intends the current European Arrest Warrant conditions to be continued, after Brexit, into next year and indefinitely into the future. Persons named in a Warrant are to be arrested and transported forcibly, in chains, abroad, by order of a foreign Prosecutor which a British judge is bound to obey blindly, despite an admission by one of the originators of the EAW, to a House of Lords Committee, that this formulation was a “misunderstanding” arising from a “mis-translation” from the French (HL62 – 1999) . No evidence needs be shown.
What the UK side still has not grasped is that under continental procedures, arrest and imprisonment is often the first step in an investigation. Only afterwards do the investigators seek evidence. This can take months or even longer (see below), and meanwhile the “suspect” rots in jail, crammed into a small cell alongside convicted murderers, rapists, mafiosi, etc. with no right to a public hearing and no obligation on the prosecution to produce any evidence during this time.
Why is this important?
In the UK and in other English-speaking jurisdictions, nobody can be arrested and imprisoned for any length of time unless the authorities have already conducted an investigation and collected enough evidence to show that there is a prima facie case to answer. This is guaranteed by our laws on Habeas Corpus, under which a prisoner has a right to a swift public hearing (hours or days after arrest) where s/he can demand that evidence of a prima facie case shall be exhibited. If insufficient evidence is produced, the prisoner must be released and the charge dropped.
This is common sense – without evidence how do we know that the right person has been arrested? And section 38 of Magna Carta provided so, in just 15 words, which have rolled down eight centuries, to protect our freedom from arbitrary state coercion.
Not so in continental Europe, where Habeas Corpus is unknown. And in particular it is not so under the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights is on record as having ruled on a case brought by an Italian prisoner against Italy. Luciano Ferrari Bravo was a Law graduate and a Professor (no less!) at Padua University, who, after all his travails, was recognised to be completely innocent and acquitted on all counts. He asked the Court if waiting up to five years in detention, with no public hearing, as he had done, was “reasonable” within the meaning of article 6 of the convention, which specifies a right to a public hearing within a “reasonable” time after arrest. The Court ruled that it was perfectly “reasonable” Why? Because “the proper conduct of [an investigation] is facilitated by the detention”, as the Court put it, see it here. The original report is under APPLICATION N° 9627/81 Luciano FERRARI-BRAVO v/ ITALY DECISION of 14 March 1984.
This precedent set by the ECHR is almost unknown in the UK, yet by itself it should be a sufficient reason for the UK to leave the ECHR. There are other cases too which show that the ECHR is entirely unfit for purpose. Yet HMG has confirmed we stay under it.
In fact under the Napoleonic-inquisitorial systems used in continental Europe, a suspect can be arrested and imprisoned, not at the end of an investigation, but at the outset, on the basis of some clues or even just a hunch by the investigators – there is no swift public hearing where the decision has to be justified by a court that is completely separate from the investigators. This procedure is also unknown to UK legal academics and practitioners. There has been no research on this by any public or academic body.There is not one Chair of Comparative Criminal Procedure in any Law School anywhere in the UK. The ignorance is total.
Clearly this gives enormous scope for judicial authorities to use their power of violent coercion quite arbitrarily, on spurious accusations, as a political battering-ram against political opponents. One EU state where this is notoriously used is Romania. The EU has chosen a Romanian prosecutor as its supremo European Public Prosecutor, and she will wield these powers over us.
This threatens not only the personal freedom of random innocent individual citizens, but our democracy itself.
How disgraceful that HMG has hidden its intention until now! Shame on the senior politicos and journos who knew but didn’t tell! All the talk was about fisheries and level playing fields, while this was their secret intention. We are now faced with a fait accompli.
Readers ask, “what can be done”?
Well, we must get it out into the public domain. Get it to “go viral”.
The government has tried to keep this secret until the last moment. Let’s foil this plot, confound their knavish tricks,
And as fast as possible, starting now. Send out a link to this page.
If everyone writes to the national papers, AND to their local papers (better chance of publication), and TV and radio stations, then there is a chance of at least some letters/emails being published.
If say the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph letters pages (dtletters@telegraph.co.uk & stletters@telegraph.co.uk) receive numerous letters, editors may feel obliged to publish at least some of them.
And write to your MP, most MPs are unaware of this sword of Damocles hanging over all our – and THEIR (!) – heads. Like the general public, they think that the EAW is only about catching criminals, they do not imagine the dire implications of ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT ON NO EVIDENCE for our democratic political processes.
Also spread the bad news via all your social media channels – facebook, twitter, etc. And email contacts.in your address books.
Those MPs and senior journos, who were informed, have refused to divulge any information on it so far. The normal, democratic, procedure is to publish a bill and invite public debate. This has NOT been done this time. They have deliberately kept the public in the dark, hoping no-one will notice.
Pretty obviously BoJo was thinking “Nobody in Britain knows or cares much about the EAW, although the EU is very keen on it, so let’s use it as a quiet bargaining chip in order to get a “Trade Deal” that looks good, and hope that nobody notices or cares. There will be no political price to pay.” He will then be able to strut about waving his “Trade Deal” in the air, thinking that his popularity ratings will have a big boost.
He must realise that there WILL BE A BIG POLITICAL PRICE TO PAY, if this goes ahead.
Perhaps we had better all hope for a ‘no deal’ situation, where all items in the WA agreed by BJ & the EU are dumped!
But I think Govt will keep us in this arrangement even in the event of No Deal. Theyre hell bent on it. The excuse is “security and cooperation”
Yes Mary, they will.
If you read the complete answer to Lord Pearson’s PQ,linked at the beginning of my article, clicking on “here” in “from the horse’s own mouth, here.”…you will see that the Home Office says that if there is no deal, then we will revert to the European Extradition Convention of 1957, which also provided for no prima facie case to be required from a requesting state. However there was a (somewhat shaky) safeguard of appealing to the Home Secretary who could stop the extradition from going forward if he thought it would be “oppressive or unjust” to do so, This safeguard would be brought back, presumably. It was eliminated when the EAW was brought in, in 2003-4, since it was thought that the appeals process took up too much time (“streamlining” the procedure, they call it).
It wold be better in fact to bring back the requirement that the requesting state present their evidence for a prima facie case against the prisoner, and the UK court could decide on that. This would present no problem for the British, because we (traditionally) never arrest a person unless we already have the evidence to charge them. In contrast tt would put the continentals on the spot because they often do not have any evidence, only some clues, which however under their laws are enough to put a suspect in prison while they seek better and harder evidence to commit them to trial.
If true, this development is truly alarming. Is there no means by which we (the ordinary people) can force the goverment to change this situation?
Perhaps a petition to Parliament? Or does anyone detained under the EAW have to take action along the lines that Torquil describes, and pretty quickly.
I wrote letters again as Torquil suggested. I tried starting a petition . This needed 5 signatures to get started. so I circulated among my own cronies but only 3 bothered to respond . I despair. I’ll take a deep breath and start again directly
Johnson has turned out to be an utter disaster, in my opinion, for this and for his liberty destroying house arrest of healthy Brits on the flimsiest and dodgiest of data. He has upstaged the Maybot, herself arguably the worst Prime Minister in our history. You can never trust a Tory.
Absolutely appalling if true.
The European Arrest Warrant will allow future UK governments to rid themselves of critics and other inconvenient people living in the UK. All it would take would be a quiet word in the ear of the EU Public Prosecutor. Then that inconvenient person could be hauled off from the UK to rot in some dungeon in the EU indefinitely. Perhaps that is why Whitehall is sticking with the EAW.
“Perhaps that is why Whitehall is sticking with the EAW.” I am certain of it. I have written a number of times to MP’s.Invariably they pretended they didnt understand my complaint (I got that impression eg with Steve Baker and my own MP who threatened me into the bargain)), or they ignored me.
Four and a half years of pantomime… and now this.
Boris hasn’t changed from his days as a member of The Bullingdon Club, has he?
Then, he and his chums could trash a restaurant and it was all “jolly good fun”… and it was OK because Daddy would foot the bill.
Now, in effect he trashes the hard won Laws of the UK, having already trashed the economy… but that’s OK. Someone else will pay the bill. Not Daddy, but us, the long-suffering, unnecessarilly impoverished, increasingly hacked-off and oppressed law-abiding citizen taxpayers.
Enough Boris… Go and find that ditch you once talked about…
I agree this is another example of infamy, perpetrated not just by this government but the whole body politic and the chattering “Elite” who feign ignorance and fail to chatter on this important fundamental attack on our basic rights.
What’s to be done? Are we at Game, Set and Match?
Sorry this is way above my pay grade,but in the absence of anything else I would suggest guerilla tactics.
For instance I believe we are fully entitled to issue EAWs, why don’t we for every one we receive and production isn’t allowed first in a British court; we will issue(manufacture) one against any EU citizen, as highly placed as possible and on receipt of his body, imprison him/her in a similar manner to that under Corpus Juris rules
Other than that is it possible to pass a law requiring all EAWs to follow English common law and court procedure? Or even an order in council or anything
“pass a law requiring all EAWs to follow English common law ” We could only sort out the whole rotten mess if we first cleared out the whole rotten swamp, corrupt biased judiciary government police the lot.
As things stand would you get very far either “going common law on them”, using the fact that the flesh and blood you isnt the corporate person known as, eg, MR JOHN BLOGGS as named on arrest warrant.
Sorry Mary the ins and outs of law are above my pay grade, but failing anything legal I am sure the only other avenue is guerilla and I thought the sort of tactics I was suggesting I.e.using the enemies tactics back at them was ideal.
Perhaps I’ve been reading too many spy stories ( in the middle of an excellent biography of John le Carre at the moment) seems one of the best ploys is to “turn” an enemy spy and make him work for you
Unbelievable.
And we can’t deport Murderers And Rapists
Cant any little lefty girl band write a song.?
Disturbing reading.
Surely Habeas Corpus and Magna Carta should trump the EAW? Now, if not before, we can see why the good citizens of the US will not give up their Second Amendment, designed to deal with such tyranny in government.
No wonder Blair introduced his firearms law; not just to do with dealing with criminals?
Yes Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus can – or at least they should – trump the EAW, if presented in court by a lawyer in the way suggested here:
https://independencedaily.co.uk/the-unconstitutional-eaw/
https://independencedaily.co.uk/the-unconstitutional-eaw-2/
I suggested this scheme as a way to stop the EAW issued by Spain against the Catalan Professor Clara Ponsati who had taken refuge in Scotland. I don’t know if her lawyer was getting ready to use it, but in any case the Spanish government withdrew the EAW against her.
So now as long as she stays in the UK she is safe, but if she returns to Spain she faces up to 25 years in prison for “violent rebellion”… !
She was an associate of Senor Puigdemont President of Catalonia who had organised a referendum for Catalan independence from Spain. Madrid sent its riot-police to physically attack the voters and discourage them from voting, and arrested and charged the promoters, who I gather are still awaiting their ultimate fate in prison.
Silly Ms Sturgeon should thank her lucky stars that Scotland is part of the United Kingdom and not Spain! Or she would be facing 25 years in prison too..
One reason for leaving the EU is that countries like Spain play very rough when they can. Once Brussels gets real hard powers, as they will with the EAW reconfirmed post-Brexit, we can expect them to play rough too, especially with their new European Public Prosecutor from Rumania.
Thanks for the response Torquil.
The goverment(s) since the 1920s have been trying to dis-arm the public This was rather nixxed by the Seecond World War, after which things went sort of quiet.
Along comes dunblain and other incidents which were lept upon by the govmt to continue with the dis-armament programme – so much so that Olympic target shooters have to practice abroad as it is illegal to do it in this country. Further one is only allowed a .22 pop gun. Compare this with the all out combat weapons the police use, when you are you are next in an airport (or a peaceful demo that does not represent black people, homosexuals, women, green activists and the other usual protected species).
I believe a type of Armalite used by the IRA used .22 ammunition and made up for the small size by a very high muzzle velocity. Perhaps someone who knows more than me can confirm?
An Armalite uses 5.56 mm ammunition.
.22 target pistols I have used use a round about an inch long.
NATO .223 rifle rounds are ~40 mm long – hence the high muzzel velocity.
The Kalashnikov 74 (no not 47) is also a high MV .22.
Never shot an Armalite. Only know It is made by an american company and supplied to the ira by americans with imagined heritage.
It was the armalite “tumbling bullet” The round was destablised so that on impact it tore itself to pieces”