EU Rules

At no surprise to anyone, UKIP supporters or otherwise, who follow the evils of the European Arrest Warrant, Julian Assange has lost his extradition case:

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is to be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault. Assange will appeal, his legal team has confirmed. If they lose he will be sent to Sweden in 10 days.

Prima facie evidence in this country is no longer required for extradition:

So it became official. The highest court in the land [House of Lords] did not think it of general public interest if one of our citizens is consigned to a foreign prison system on trumped up charges.

And so it proves:

The defence had argued that the allegations against Assange were not offences in English law and therefore not grounds for extradition.

So:

Outside the court Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, said the ruling had not come as a surprise and reaffirmed the Assange team's concerns that adhering to the European arrest warrant (EAW) amounted to "tick box justice".

Therefore, democracy takes a back seat:

Stephens suggested Riddle had been "hamstrung" by the EAW. "We're pretty sure the secrecy and the way [the case] has been conducted so far have registered with this judge. He's just hamstrung," he told reporters.

As I blogged here, the Guardian are outraged but not enough to campaign against our membership of the EU - you reap what you sow.

Update: Assange is in the Telegraph (my emphasis):

The ruling against him came as a result of "a European arrest warrant system run amok", he claimed.

He said: "There was no consideration during this entire process as to the merit of the allegations made against me, no consideration or examination of even the complaints made in Sweden and of course we have always known we would appeal."

A Bit Late To The Party

When I read Iain Dale's latest post last night on the fact that he's just noticed the failings of the European Arrest Warrant, I honestly couldn't face writing another blog post about him, especially with such 'observational' gems such these:

I haven't had a strong view on the European Arrest Warrant up to now. Until today. I could see its value in bringing trans-border criminals to justice more speedily, even if my gut instinct was to feel that it was yet another chink in the armour of sovereign British justice.

and (my emphasis):

Theresa May has recently extended the powers of the EAW by signing up to the European Investigation Order. I hope she understood what she was doing.

and:

And if Theresa May is the woman I think she is, she will pick up the phone to her Greek counterpart tomorrow morning and ask him to put right this apparent massive injustice.

Go on Theresa. You know you want to.

Thankfully The Devil's Knife has responded in his typically robust manner and very well worth a read it is too.

Update: It appears there's a dispute over whether Dan Hannan and other Tories voted for or against the EAW in the EU Parliament. DK cites Trixy as saying yes they did, whilst Dan Hannan left a comment here claiming that he didn't. I've left a comment on DK saying:

DK: The vote was taken on Feb 6th 2002 as shown here ... and the voting record is here. 412 voted in favour and 122 against. Records show that Hannan voted against the Arrest Warrant. Hope that helps.

Although it does appear that the Tories did vote against a "habeas corpus" safeguard amendment as reported by the Telegraph.

Left To Rot

I've touched on the scandal of the European Arrest Warrant before, and so it's reared it's ugly head again (my emphasis):

 A man facing extradition to Portugal to stand trial for a crime he was acquitted of nearly two decades ago said today his life has been 'turned upside-down'.

Photographer Graham Mitchell, 49, said he had been left 'terrified' by the prospect of being sent abroad to face charges he thought he had been cleared of.

Mr Mitchell was earlier this month arrested on a European arrest warrant to face charges of the attempted murder of a German tourist on the Algarve in 1994.

But Mr Mitchell and his friend, Warren Tozer, were in 1995 cleared of the attack on Andre Jorling, who was left paralysed from the waist down after falling from a 12ft sea wall.

British police acting on the arrest warrant issued by Portuguese authorities arrested Mr Mitchell at his home in Canterbury, Kent, on March 6.

British Police are effectively being ordered to arrest British citizens based on no evidence and on a double jeopardy case 18 years after the alleged crime was committed. Not only that they can’t even get the charges right.

The scandal of the EAW was instigated by Lib Dem MEP Sir Graham Watson MEP:

Yet again Sir Graham Watson MEP cannot resist telling the world that he is the man responsible for guiding the ill conceived and flawed European Arrest warrant through the European Parliament.

Indeed Sir Graham seems to be proud of his part in bringing about this legislation even though his enthusiasm is shared by very few others.

The European Arrest Warrant overrides centuries of British judicial tradition.

And has subsequently been supported by Nick Clegg:

Nick Clegg has argued that the European Arrest Warrant - a cross-border crime-fighting agreement heavily criticised by many Conservatives - "is indispensable" to the UK.

The deputy prime minister said co-operation was the "only means" of tackling drugs, smuggling and gangs.

It is also a situation supported by our judiciary, and, despite the fake protestations to the contrary, by our MSM by virtue of their support of EU membership.

We're being left to rot.

Red Lines

The Daily Mail reports that the Tory-led coalition Government are set to allow foreign police forces jurisdiction on British soil;

Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.

Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.

They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.

Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.

These new powers would come under the European Investigation Order (EIO), which is intended to compliment the controversial European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and the European Evidence Warrant (EEW) to be implemented by 2011.

The EIO Directive has been proposed on the basis of Article 82(2)(a) of the Lisbon Treaty. This means that the proposal is subject to qualified majority voting so no member state has a veto.

The UK, however has an opt in as part of its infamous red lines negotiated by the previous administration, so it could decide not to take part in the process at all, and let the other member states continue on their own. But no, as the Mail reports, the coalition cannot wait to sign up quick enough:

But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week.

Whitehall insiders say ministers have been persuaded it has many benefits. In particular, police say they will gain from the fact that the arrangements will be reciprocal, making it easier for them to track suspects overseas.

Ministers have been persuaded? I bet they have, by the Foreign Office whose loyalty is to the bureaucrats in Brussels not to us.

Even worse, not only will the EIO allow any EU police force to start investigations on UK soil, but no judicial authority is needed to verify whether there are reasonable grounds for an offence to have been committed. Even in this country the police can’t investigate on a whim, they need to have reasonable grounds.

But even if Cameron promises (and we know what these are like) that the EIO should be subjected to judicial scrutiny, if we decide to opt in it would be very difficult to amend the draft proposals anyway. There is no guarantee that the EIO would not pass in its current and highly dangerous format. And once the UK has decided to opt-in there is no right to opt-out even if the outcome of the negotiations is not acceptable.

Once again the Tories are shown to be complete Europhiles, as Richard North points out:

But now we have the Tories back again, we can look forward to another leap forward in European integration, just as we do every time we have a Tory government.

Amusingly, and not surprisingly, just before the election, the Labour was accused of wanting to sign up to the same proposal:

Minutes of a parliamentary committee show Labour is quietly backing the idea. Home office minister Meg Hillier said: 'We would in principle support a new and comprehensive instrument based on mutual recognition that covers all types of evidence'.

And the Tory response? Tory justice spokesman Dominic Grieve said at the time:

'In supporting this proposal, Labour is yet again showing its relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties'.

The voters outside looked from Labour to Tory, and from Tory to Labour, and from Labour to Tory again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

UKIP Conference

As you may have guessed I returned back yesterday from my weekend jolly on the south coast. I had intended to post a few comments straight away, but got waylaid, so here's a short summary today. Speaking to relatives yesterday, it seems that coverage of the conference by the media was scant if any at all. Hardly surprising when the BBC's attitude amounts to this.

Onto the conference itself (many thanks to Witterings for the lift). This was the first full proper party conference I've ever attended. So a slightly new experience for me. (though most conferences, political or otherwise, can usually be summed up with one word - alcohol). First impressions; good location and well organised, although a slight black mark for the person who forgot to remove the EU flag from a pole on the roof above the entrance.

I listened to about 3/4 of the speeches. Highlights on day one, speech wise, was Petr Mach a politician from the Czech Republic and founder of the eurosceptic Free Citizens Party, Lord Stoddart a very early Labour critic of the common market before the UK joined, and Lord Monckton. Lord Monckton told me a wonderful and amusing story outside the hall, before he was due to go on stage, about how he conducted a citizen's arrest on a traffic warden for breach of the peace, when said warden tried to ticket his motorbike for a parking offence.

The most powerful speech for me in the whole conference was given by Gerard Batten on the Saturday regarding the failings of the European Arrest Warrant. His speech can be found here in full, it really is worth a read. As part of the speech, a short video was played regarding the case of Mark Turner and Jason McGoldrick who were victims of the warrant. Locked up for 117 days, without charge, on trumped up evidence; their accounts of conditions in the Hungarian former KGB jail were truly horrific. It took the hard work of UKIP MEP William Dartmouth to secure their release, unfortunately only on bail at the moment. Mark and Jason had turned up in person to thank UKIP and specifically William Dartmouth in person. Where were the other parties' MEPs and MPs in this case you may ask, why was it left to a UKIP MEP? Well I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Batten's speech in fact left me feeling so angry that I had to leave not long after he had finished to calm down. Here's an extract regarding Andrew Symeou which indicates why (my emphasis):

It was obvious to the Appeal Court Judges that there was no real evidence against him and what there was appeared to be fabricated by the Greek police. But they were powerless to consider it.

They did the only thing that they could which was refer the appeal to the House of Lords on the basis of asking if the apparent fabrication of evidence amounted to an abuse of process of the EAW. The House of Lords, in what must be one of the most despicable decisions in its long history, refused to even hear the case on the grounds it “did not have an arguable point of law of general public interest”. So it became official. The highest court in the land did not think it of general public interest if one of our citizens is consigned to a foreign prison system on trumped up charges.

The political establishment really hate us don't they?

The other major issue was, of course, the next leadership election. Nigel Farage used his speech to put his name forward, not entirely unsurprising in my view, as did others - David Campbell Bannerman launched a not very veiled attack on Farage. Let the leadership shenanigans begin.

I also went to an unofficial fringe meeting hosted by Nikki Sinclair. She was launching this referendum campaign which aims to gain a 100,000 signatures for a referendum on our membership with the EU, in accordance with these proposals from the coalition not yet debated:

Present proposals to the House of Commons to ensure that any petition that secures 100,000 signatures within a given year will be eligible for formal debate in Parliament, and that the petition with the most signatures be tabled as a Bill

Nikki's campaign is not to be confused with this one.

So all in all a successful conference, it's good to meet up again with familiar faces and meet new UKIP ones such as Mark Wadsworth, but slightly overshadowed by what will be another bout of UKIP's tendency for in-fighting.

After it was all over I had a quick beer in a recommended pub in Torquay while waiting to go home. It was a proper local's pub, very friendly. Obviously me being in a suit and tie led to some inquisitive questions from those sat at the bar. A discussion about politics quickly followed. The first complaint / concerns from the locals? Yep you've guessed it, immigration.

As an aside, if you should wish to visit and stay in Torquay then I thoroughly recommend this place. It was one of the best B&B's I've ever stayed in.

First They Came...

First they came for a grandmother,
and some didn't speak out because they read the Guardian / BBC.

Then they came for the students,
and some didn't speak out because they read the Guardian / BBC.

Then they came for the football fans,
and some didn't speak out because they read the Guardian / BBC.

Then they came for the business men,
and some didn't speak out because they read the Guardian / BBC.

Then they came for the holiday makers,
and some didn't speak out because they read the Guardian / BBC.

Then they came for the Guardian /BBC reader,
and it's whoops perhaps this European Arrest Warrant is not such a good thing after all (my emphasis):

One of the arguments Mr Assange's lawyers will raise concerns what is known as "double" or "dual criminality". This principle ensures that no one is extradited unless the allegations against them from the requesting state, amount to a criminal offence in English law.

His lawyers will argue that the first three allegations which cover unlawful coercion and sexual molestation do not constitute an offence under English law.

The equivalent offence would be sexual assault, which requires a lack of consent. It will be argued that the arrest warrant doesn't allege a lack of consent.

Double criminality, however, doesn't apply in the case of the fourth allegation, rape.

This is one of the list of offences under the European Arrest Warrant framework where the extraditing country has simply to tick a box.

Mr Assange's lawyers will seek to argue double criminality here by reference to European law, but it may prove a difficult argument to win.

Hardly a surprise - the EAW means that UK magistrates no longer consider prima facie evidence for extradition.

EIO? Nothing To Fear?

Thanks to the Tory Government choosing to opt in to the European Investigation Order, we can now be subjected to investigations by other countries for crimes which aren't even illegal in this country. A classic example is denying the Holocaust, something which is illegal in Germany, but not here in the UK. The EU Observer says (my emphasis):

In particular, Statewatch, the UK-based civil liberties monitor, says there is no longer a basis for refusal on the grounds of territoriality and what is called "dual criminality" - that the act for which information is sought must constitute a crime punishable in both states.

This would now mean that a person who committed an act which is legal in the member state where the act was carried out could, according to critics, be subject to body, house and business searches, financial investigations, and some forms of covert surveillance, if the act is regarded as a crime under the law of another member state.

For example, Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany and 12 other EU countries but not in the UK, Sweden or Spain - each of which back the new proposals. The EIO could thus in theory used by Germany to someone who denied the Holocaust in a country where to do so is legal.

Use of EU powers like this to prosecute people for actions not illegal in other EU states already has a precedence. In 2008 UK Police arrested an Australian, under the European Arrest Warrant in order to deport him to Germany for denying the Holocaust:

A leading holocaust denier who runs a website insisting the Nazis did not murder millions of Jews will face an extradition hearing tomorrow after being arrested as he flew into Britain.

Dr Fredrick Toben was seized at Heathrow at the request of the German authorities for publishing 'anti-Semitic and/or revisionist' material between 2000 and 2004.

Dr Toben - who claims to be facing a 'witch-trial' - has committed no crime in Britain, where Holocaust denial is not an offence.

But, under the terms of a European Arrest Warrant designed to fast-track extraditions, the Australian citizen can be held in the UK pending possible deportation to Germany - where he faces five years in prison.

The EAW already has well documented abuses attached to it, the EIO will add to this, especially with its lack of safeguards, as Tory MP Dominic Raab points out:

...that there are no proper limits on the nature of the crimes involved – so they could be trivial, or not even offences under UK law...the Order even provides legal authority for European police to carry out investigations on British soil.

It's also not beyond the possibility that other member states could pass legislation that bars criticism of the EU which then could be applied to other member states via these instruments. Don't believe me? Here's yesterday's EUObserver regarding a proposed Italian 'gag law':

Bloggers, podcasters and even anyone who posts updates on social networks such as Facebook all face being slapped with fines of up to €25,000 for publishing incorrect facts, if a bill that journalists' organisations are calling "authoritarian" currently before the Italian parliament is passed.

A provision within the government's Media and Wiretapping Bill will extend Italy's "obbligo di rettifica", or rectification obligation - a law dating back to 1948 that requires newspapers to publish corrections - to the internet and indeed anyone "responsible for information websites".

According to the draft law, bloggers and other online publishers - which lawyers believe includes users of Facebook and Myspace - will be obliged to post corrections within 48 hours of any complaint regarding their content.

If authors do not comply, they face fines of up to €25,000.

Should the Italian Government pass this legislation, then it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see where this could logically end up using EU instruments.

And the Tories have opted in to only the draft version of the EIO, the final version can end up being much much worse, with no exit being possible. I hope anyone who voted Tory feels pleased with themselves.