Where U.S. needs trump British rights.

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Rod Liddle

There’s such a thing as being too cooperative with an ally, said Rod Liddle in the London Spectator. Britain has given the U.S. the right to extradite any British citizen to the U.S.—even someone not accused of committing a crime on U.S. soil. The extradition law was passed in a wave of guilt over the revelation that some of the 9/11 hijackers had studied in British schools. We thought we owed it to the Americans to let them “get at potential Islamic terrorists holed up” in London suburbs. But the law is so broad that it now has even been used in the Enron case, to grab three British businessmen who sent e-mails to Enron officials. The prosecutors want the men, who committed no crime in the U.S., to testify against the Enron officials who are currently on trial in Houston. In the past, the Home Office would have denied such a request, but it no longer has the legal authority to do so. If the Americans want a Brit, any Brit, they get him. What really galls is that Britain has asked for the extradition of “dozens of IRA terrorists” over the years, and the U.S. has given up exactly zero. “Bit of an imbalance there, don’t you think?”