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November 17, 2005
UK: Islamists To Be Extradited To US, Spain and France
We wrote yesterday of the case of Babar Ahmad, who is to be sent to the United States to face trial for his recruiting and funding of jihadists on his websites.
Today, news arrives of two more Islamists being extradited to face trial in countries where serious terror crimes have been committed.
EpochTimes reports that a Syrian born Islamist, Moutaz Almallah Dabas, will be sent to Spain to face trial for his alleged connection with the Madrid train bombings of March 2004 which killed 191 people. Dabas was arrested in March. He was told by Judge Anthony Evans at Bow Street Magistrates Court: "You will be extradited within the next 10 days."
Dabas was held under a new European arrest warrant which also accuses him of attempting to indoctrinate others to become followers of Osama bin Laden. The new warrants allow the once laborious process of extraditions within Europe to be speeded up.
And to the relief of France, Britain's longest-serving extradition detainee, Rachid Ramda, has lost his High Court appeal against being sent to France. Rnch authorities want him to face trial for the bombing of a Paris Metro (subway) station in 1995, in which eight people died, according to the Telegraph this afternoon.
Ramda, allegedly a member of the Algerian terrorist group, the Groupe Islam Arme, has fought attempt to send him to France for 10 years. Two judges over-rules claims that new moves to have Ramda extradited were based on flawed evidence. In 2002, two High Court Judges nullified an extradition order against Ramda, expressing concern about some of the evidence against him. Ramda's lawyers have said they will appeal to the House of Lords.
These three extraditions come after the Home Office spent so long doing nothing in the case of one suspect, Farj Hassan Faraj, who had been held for three years in Britain, that an important Italian trial collapsed.
Arrested in May 2002, a UK judge approved Faraj's extradition to Italy in December 2004. Faraj, wanted for involvement with plotting to blow up European targets while in Milan, managed to remain in UK detention long enough to outlast the expiry of a three year deadline. Under Italian law, a case must be heard within three years. The laziness or inefficiency on the part of the Home Office allowed the trial in Italy to be abandoned.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 17, 2005 1:59 PM
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