Justice Eurojust style

11 November 2006

A new EU-US deal, made over the heads of national parliaments and ignored by the media, is set to make it even easier for the US to whisk away “terrorists” on the basis of flimsy or even non-existent evidence, writes Stephen Gardner. The agreement builds on the controversial EU-US extradition agreement, which, when implemented in the UK by David Blunkett, removed the requirement on the US to provide prima facie evidence in extradition proceedings and led to the case of the NatWest Three. Under the new deal, a US official will participate in Eurojust, a little-known EU body that brings attorney generals together to speed up cross-border crime investigations.  The US liaison officer will have the power to access case files and send the information back home, where there are no data protection controls for material relating to non-US citizens. Eurojust has justified the step as an anti-terrorism measure, but according to the vague wording of the agreement, the US may use the evidence it obtains in “non-criminal judicial and administrative proceedings” or “for any other purpose.”  Furthermore – quelle surprise – there is no reciprocal right for EU prosecutors to obtain information from the US.  The path has therefore been smoothed for even more NatWest Three-style extraditions from across the EU. Henry Kissinger once famously complained he didn’t know Europe’s telephone number.  Life is a lot easier for the US administration now – there are lots of numbers to obscure one-stop shops like Eurojust, which are only too keen to do what the US tells them. A version of this article originally appeared in Private Eye.

 

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