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From Dennis Cooper

He may be VP of the EPP-ED, but at least this is one Tory who’s mentioned the EU Arrest Warrant.

The Scotsman

‘NatWest Three’ case shows government is failing to preserve rights of citizens

The extradition of the “NatWest Three” has rightly stirred the awareness of the public that the Labour government has no interest in preserving the rights of British citizens. It has become so obsessed with trying to protect the public from terrorist threats and kowtowing to President Bush, that it has started to oppress rather than defend.

Labour’s naturally statist and centralising tendencies mean that it is going down the dangerous road of trying to control the population to such an extent that it is systematically destroying hundreds of years of hard-won rights in a matter of months, in a futile and misdirected effort to win the so called “war on terror”.

Now, by cravenly signing up to a non-reciprocal treaty with the United States, any British citizen who has ever worked or even visited the US could be grabbed by American police and hauled over the Atlantic to face charges that they will be ill-equipped to defend.

It is immaterial whether the US Senate ratifies a reciprocal arrangement with the United Kingdom; the whole premise is wrong, and whether they are guilty or not, we should all be protesting in the street about this legislation.

We should also wake up to the fact that we have been placed in this appalling position not just with the US, but also with the entire European Union. With the establishment of the European arrest warrant, we are just as likely to be carted off to another European country as we are to the US.

Again, no proof has to be given of the alleged offence and it allows British citizens to be extradited for crimes - some of them vague and undefined (remember the UK plane spotters in Greece?) - that are not crimes in the UK. It also may lead to our citizens facing trial in other countries, some of whose legal systems operate on the presumption of guilt.

It is in this case, a reciprocal arrangement with currently seven countries out of the 25 member states, but will later expand to include all EU members, but this is cold comfort for someone trying to conduct their defence in a foreign language and within a very different legal tradition.

While I am, of course, in favour of extraditing hardcore criminals to face their accusers, the previous system meant that a prima facie case had first to be made before extradition procedures could begin.

The highest German court in July last year annulled the law of July 2004 which brought in the European arrest warrant as it held that the law applying the warrant did not respect fundamental rights and procedural guarantees and so was contrary to the German constitution.

It is a shame that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his colleagues are not as conscientious in the defence of British liberties as the Germans are of theirs.

STRUAN STEVENSON, MEP, Vice-president, EPP-ED group in the European Parliament, Rue Wiertz, Brussels

A war on terrorism, kidnapped soldiers, calls for defendants to be tried in their own country? Does this sound familiar? I am not referring to the “NatWest Three”, nor Guantanamo, nor even Hezbollah, but the trial of American terrorists who, on 10 June, 1772, burnt and sank the British warship, Gaspee, and took the crew prisoner.

And, what was the American response? To allow the trial to be removed to England where a hostile jury was bound to convict them? No, they went to war to uphold their right to have Americans tried by Americans and assert the right of all democratic juries to set free defendants whose only guilt was to break British tax laws. How things have changed. Is it time for a British war of independence?

MIKE HASELER, Poplar Drive, Lenzie, Dunbartonshire