Extradition to the UK blocked

A European court recently blocked the extradition of an alleged drug dealer due to concerns over the protection of his human rights in the requesting state. Perhaps not an unusual decision at first glance. But what makes this case stand out is that the requesting state was the United Kingdom.

While it is not uncommon for British courts to block an extradition request on similar grounds, the tables have been somewhat turned in this case.

The requested person, an unnamed Albanian national and UK resident, was accused of trafficking 5 kilos of cocaine, as well as various money laundering offences in relation to funds amounting to €384,000. He reportedly travelled to Germany to be with his fiancée, who was seriously unwell.

After an order was made by Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the UK authorities asked INTERPOL to issue an international wanted person’s notice, commonly known as a Red Notice. The suspect was duly arrested by German police.

In court, his defence lawyer (who had previously studied in the UK and written an academic paper on prison conditions here) argued that the inherent weaknesses of the country’s penal system rendered extradition unlawful due to concerns that his client’s human rights would be breached if remanded in custody in the UK. The defence argument drew the court’s attention to a number of failings in the system, including chronic overcrowding, staff shortages, and violence amongst inmates. Structural weaknesses to the infrastructure of some prisons were also highlighted, with reference made to small, dark and poorly-ventilated cells.

The Karlsruhe court looked at these grounds in the context of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which governs many aspects of the new relationship between the EU and the UK following Brexit. The TCA provides that an executing court may request additional guarantees from the requesting country where “there are reasonable grounds to believe that there is a real threat to the protection of the fundamental rights of the requested person”.

The court evidently was persuaded by the defence evidence, and ruled that it would not order the individual’s extradition to the UK unless guarantees could be provided by British authorities. The British response was less than forthcoming, however, consisting of a reply from a Manchester police station referring to plans to create 20,000 prison spaces in the UK – and then silence.

The case is likely to cause embarrassment to the UK government, and to others associated with the country’s justice system, although it may not come as a surprise to many.  

Whatever the reasoning behind it, the decision highlights again – and this time from an external standpoint – the current dire state of a vital part of the UK criminal justice system. Overcrowding in British prisons has been a news story for many years, and appears only to be getting worse. Other components of the system are no less affected, with court buildings crumbling, and in some cases forced to close, law enforcement investigations taking longer, wait times for many criminal court trials exceeding two years, and recruitment and retention of judges, prosecution lawyers and agency investigators becoming more difficult.

Unfortunately, it seems that the only real solution to this problem – more money – is still barely in sight. As highlighted by the Prison Reform Trust in 2022, although the government has made a number of announcements over the past few years about its plans to build new prisons, along with the billions of pounds of funding to be allocated - these communications have been confusing and contradictory, and at best only an extra 2,000 prison places have been created. In June 2023, the head of the Prison Governors’ Association threatened to bring legal action against the government if it attempted to exceed the operational capacity of the prison estate.  

Meanwhile, there has been resort to urgent, short-term measures such as allowing prisoners to be held in police cells and installing portable buildings in prison grounds – and most recently, exploration of the idea of renting overseas prison capacity. At the same time, the government has proposed changes to the justice system which seem to be focused on making headlines and will only add to the prison population. These include new plans to require judges to hand down whole life orders for murders which involve sexual or sadistic conduct, the end to automatic release of those convicted of terrorism offences, and longer minimum terms of custody in many recent criminal statutes.

In the absence of meaningful reforms and increased funding, this will only make the situation worse, and decisions like the one of the Karlsruhe court may become more common.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information on the issues raised in this blog, please contact a member of our International Crime and Extradition team. You can also find out more about the work of that team by clicking here.

About the authors

Will Hayes is a senior associate in the criminal litigation team with a practice focussing predominantly on serious and complex crime, extradition and INTERPOL Red Notices.

Úna Campbell is a legal apprentice in the Criminal Litigation team at Kingsley Napley. She is currently in her third year at the University of Law, London, where she is working towards a Level 7 Solicitor Apprenticeship. Her apprenticeship at Kingsley Napley has enabled her to work across a range of disciplines and she is now greatly enjoying her work within the criminal litigation practice.