Britain\'s Dilemma: to Extradite or Not to Extradite

A British judge's refusal on Monday to extradite a radical Muslim cleric to Jordan is the latest twist in a string of terror-related extraditions in the U.K. The recent flurry of high-profile extradition cases - some that resulted in extradition, some that did not - has exposed an unsettling randomness at the heart of the country's extradition policy.

Abu Qatada, a Palestinian-born Jordanian believed to have had close ties to Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda figures, will be set free on bail today after an intense decade-long court battle. “Judge John Mitting ordered Abu Qatada, 52, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, to be released from prison on Tuesday under tight bail conditions,” my colleague John F. Burns reported yesterday.

The judge's ruling was “deeply unsatisfactory,” said Home Secretary Theresa May. As she told the BBC, “Qatada is a dangerous man, a suspected terrorist, who is accused of serious crimes in his home cou ntry of Jordan.” The government had lobbied for Mr. Qatada's removal from Britain for years, saying it had been doing “everything it could to get rid of [him].”

Britain has long struggled with how to balance civil liberties and national security prerogatives, often opting to freed radicalized Muslims whose calls for holy war against the West the government has deemed offensive and dangerous. In 2004, Britain adopted laws to make extradition to the United States easier in the wake of the September 11th attacks. But those laws were later questioned, examined and found, in one report, to be biased.

The British government said it had gone to great lengths to obtain legal assurances from the Jordanians about the treatment Abu Qatada would receive if he were sent home, but the presiding judge ruled against Ms. May and the government, saying that British and Jordanian guarantees were flimsy and did nothing to prevent information about Abu Qatada gleaned through to rture of other suspects from being used in court.

While never formally charged with a crime in the U.K., Mr. Qatada has been in and out of custody and detention for years, and is believed to have been instrumental in plotting bomb attacks in Jordan, where he was convicted in abstentia in 1999.

Ms. May says she plans to take a fresh look at Britain's extradition laws. This could include enacting a measure that would give judges more discretion to extradite if all or part of the alleged criminal activity took place on British soil. Ms. May has also indicated she might want to get rid of the automatic appeal stage that is currently part of the country's extradition policy.

Ms. May has often pushed for extradition, but in mid October another high profile case arose in which she lobbied against it, and won. As my colleague Harvey Morris explained on Rendezvous, Ms. May led the government's decision not to send Gary McKinnon to face trial in the United States. Th e 46-year old Scottish computer hacker admitted to breaking into NASA and Pentagon military computer systems, causing an estimated $800,000 in damage.

While Ms. May said the decision not to extradite the hacker was a “one time event” linked to his health - he has Asperger's Syndrome - she then went on to say she planned to begin a review of pending extradition cases to determine whether a trial in Britain would ultimately be more effective in other instances. The U.K.-based anti-extradition group Liberty said it “welcomed this compassionate and common sense announcement.”

Last month, in yet another high-profile case, the government sent five terrorism suspects to the United States to face trial. Among them was Abu Hamza al-Masri, a one-eyed Egyptian preacher with a lame hand who had been serving time in a British prison since 2006 on charges of incitement to murder for his radical preaching at a London mosque. Abu Hamza now faces 11 charges in a Manhattan Federal District Court ranging from calling for holy war in Afghanistan to attempting to set up a terrorism training camp in Oregon. In that case, Ms. May said British and American authorities worked hand in hand to ensure that Mr. Masri would be “handed over within hours of the court's decision.”