Alex Stone is a blind computer science graduate from south London who had worked for a bank for ten years. In May 2003 he joined an email list for blind people, and started chatting to a woman called Alma from Kansas City. They started talking regularly on the phone as well as emailing each other. After a few months they decided they wanted to meet, so Alex made plans to fly out to Kansas City and spend a holiday with Alma that August.
In 2003, as his friendship with Alma was blossoming, Alex Stone was still blissfully unaware of the world of political treaties. Alex and Alma spent a wonderful fortnight together, and Alex met Alma’s son, one-year-old Zachary. In the light of his new relationship, he decided to take the redundancy offer he’d been made, and to move out to the US to be with Alma: ‘It was exactly what I wanted to do; I wanted to go and live out there and be with her’.
Alex sorted out his life in the UK and flew back to Kansas City in November 2003. He hadn’t been there long when the trouble began. Zachary developed a cold that wouldn’t get better. He was clearly unwell, so Alma’s mother took him to hospital to be looked at. While he was there, the doctors decided to X-ray him, and discovered that both of his arms and both of his legs were broken.
Alma rushed to hospital to be with Zachary, and Alex stayed at home in her apartment. But over the next four or five days, Alex began to feel uncomfortable, and gradually realised that suspicion was falling on him. ‘Because I was new on the scene, it was convenient for them to suspect me rather than look at their own family.’
Things got worse when a friend of the family came round to the apartment to warn him. The friend said Alma’s family might try to ‘do something stupid’. Feeling threatened, Alex moved out of Alma’s apartment into a motel. Another four days went past and, after no further contact with Alma, the police turned up. He was taken in for questioning and accused of having injured the child. The only other people who could have injured Zachary were members of Alma’s family, and according to the police they were all ‘very nice people’.
Alex wasn’t charged, and he was taken back to his motel. He contacted a lawyer, who told him that as he hadn’t been charged with anything he was free to go, and ought to get out of the US as quickly as possible. So he did; he flew home to London straight away. He’d been in the US less than a month.
Back home he discovered that the papers and TV news reports in Missouri were full of stories saying he had been charged with injuring Zachary, and that he was now in prison. Despite the inaccuracy of the reports, the fact that he had been formally charged with the crime meant things were getting more serious.
First-degree assault on a minor can carry a sentence of up to 30 years in the US.
Nothing happened for a year. Then, in November 2004, Alex’s neighbour at his old flat phoned to say that three policemen had been knocking at his door. Alex was advised to turn himself in.
Two days later he presented himself at Charing Cross Police Station, where he was arrested and extradition proceedings began.
Over the following months, and several more court appearances, he discovered that he had absolutely no defence under the Extradition Act. Simply by charging Alex with the crime, the US had the right to extradite him. Thanks to David Blunkett’s new law, the British legal system was impotent to protect him. At the end of April 2005, Alex’s family drove him to Gatwick Airport, where he was handed over to the Scotland Yard extradition squad, handcuffed, shackled, and put on a private jet to the US.
He was then transferred across the country in ‘holding cells’, and his journey ended in the county jail in (the ironically named) Liberty, Missouri. He was locked up for 23 hours a day. He was allowed to take his laptop with him to write letters, but they didn’t give him a printer, so he couldn’t print them or send them back. It took several months to get him a scanner so that he could scan in and read the letters that were sent to him. He couldn’t make international calls or send emails, so he had no contact with his family in London for many months. When his father came to visit him in September, there was a glass screen between them, and they had to talk using a telephone. For Alex, his dad might as well have been in London.
He was in jail for six and a half months. In November, Alex’s mother helped to secure bail, but he had to remain in the US. By February, his lawyers went to the public prosecutor and, in Alex’s words, ‘They said, look, you’ve got no evidence here, have you? This is not going to stand up in court, so why don’t you just drop it?’ But the prosecutors were stuck because, having gone to the trouble of extraditing Alex, they needed to find him guilty of something. Alex and his lawyers negotiated a plea bargain. He passed a polygraph test, pleaded guilty to fleeing the country (despite the fact that he did it solely on the advice of a US lawyer), and flew home to the UK in the first week of March 2006. He’d been stuck in legal limbo for over 10 months.
There is another reason why the prosecutors were prepared to accept the plea bargain. Alma’s brother had a child who was discovered to have similar injuries that dated from a time when Alex wasn’t even in the country. The mother of that child and the grandmother were prepared to testify against a family member who was suspected of injuring both children. For Alex, it was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now Alex is living in London and looking for work with a 16- month hole in his CV. ‘It is very difficult to prove you haven’t done something. This has robbed me of two and a half years of my life and cost me around £50,000 – money I will not get back. I feel angry about it, but most of all I feel very sad.’
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Liberty Policy Director Gareth Crossman said:
"The Extradition Act 2003 undermines longstanding safeguards against unfair removal and unfortunately appears to be more about politics than law.”
Liberty Press Office on 0207 378 3656 or 0797 3 831 128
NOTES TO EDITORS
In October 2006, Liberty, the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the Bar Human Rights Council, Justice, Gareth Peirce and others unsuccessfully sought Parliamentary support for a law to provide greater protection for British citizens who may be extradited to face criminal charges abroad.
Liberty intervened in the case Government of the United States of America v Bermingham, Mulgrew and Darby, to argue that removal to the United States would engage Article 8 of the Human Rights Act which protects the right to respect for a private and family life. Liberty argued that the interference with family life caused by removal to the United States must be disproportionate if shown to be unnecessary through the ability to dispose of the case to the United Kingdom. The three were sent to the USA in July 2006.
Home Office statistics show that the US government has made 47 extradition requests since January 2004. The UK government has made 12 such requests of the US.
Liberty Briefing- The Extradition Treaty 2003:
The UK's extradition laws have been radically overhauled in recent years. The Extradition Act 2003 created a system of fast track processing of extradition applications. This means that British citizens can be removed from the UK to many jurisdictions without the need for a court to hear that there is any evidence against them. The United States is one country where the fast track process has been introduced. However, Liberty does not think that debate over extradition should focus on the US and the non reciprocal nature of our extradition procedures as this might allow principled debate to be construed as anti Americanism. In any case, summary extradition should not take place from any state.
Liberty does not believe anyone should be removed from the United Kingdom without a British Court being satisfied that there is evidence. When Liberty argued this during the passage of the Extradition Bill the government responded that the removal of safeguard would be balanced by the introduction of a protection that no-one would be removed from the UK if doing so would breach their human rights.
When extradition proceeding were taken against the Natwest 3, Liberty intervened in the High Court. We argued that this human rights protection meant that if a case could be tried in the United Kingdom, it would breach rights to a family life if someone were taken overseas. No-one should face the prospects of being held in an overseas prison awaiting trial, away from family and friends, if they can face trial in the UK. The growing international and multi-jurisdictional nature of the criminal law means that cases of this type will become increasing common.
Liberty also argued that the positive duties imposed by the Human Rights Act 1998 should require the prosecuting authorities to take steps to see if prosecution were possible. We do not believe that nearly enough has been done to bring proceedings against the Natwest 3. Writing in the Financial Times on 10 July 2006 Baroness Scotland said 'It is for the prosecuting authorities to consider whether a case should be heard in the UK.' Liberty would argue that when a failure to do so will result in a person instead facing trial on the other side of the world, the state should do more than 'consider' but take positive steps to see if prosecution is possible. Liberty would also remind Parliamentarians that when considering criminal charges, the UK prosecuting authorities need to consider not only the evidence, but also the public interest. There appears to be no public interest test in relation to extradition.
Unfortunately the case is not proceeding to the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords which means that there will not be an opportunity to put forward these arguments.
Parliament urgently needs to review the grounds for permitting extradition and the protections against unfair extradition. In particular there is a need to address
The lack of evidence needed to permit extradition
The lack of an obligation in domestic law requiring a case to be heard in the UK if possible. |
