British magistrate has no alternativeA British citizen can now find himself extradited to a foreign country for actions which are not crimes in Britain. If a foreign judicial official fills in a tick-box for claiming that the citizen is suspected of having committed a crime, a British magistrate now has no legal alternative but to order that person’s immediate arrest and subsequent delivery to a prison in that country. The Warrant thus abolishes the legal requirement, which existed until this year, that a person requesting the arrest of a British citizen had to prove they had sufficient evidence to justify an arrest – i.e. a prima facie case.
Torquil Dick-Erikson, a legal researcher who first uncovered the EU’s aims to set up its Corpus Juris system of justice, prophesied: “The United Kingdom risks the greatest degree of ‘culture shock’ if its citizens become subject of the Euro Arrest Warrant”.
Four years to the day after the political leaders of the European Union made it a criminal offence, punishable by fines up to £2,000, for British traders to sell to their customers in traditional weights and measures, another British liberty was lost on 1 January, when eight of the 15 member nations of the EU, including Britain, introduced the European Arrest Warrant. The other seven are: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The procedure implements European Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA dated 13 June 2002.
‘Speed up and simplify’
Claimed by the EU to be merely a device to ‘speed up and simplify’ extradition procedures, the Euro Arrest Warrant is a mechanism for the removal of a person from one EU country to another, on the authority of a magistrate or other judicial official.
The new ‘streamlined’ extradition procedure applied to 32 separate categories of offences, including some crimes yet to be properly defined, such as ‘racism and xenophobia’.
Christian concern about the European Arrest Warrant centres on fears that a proposed new definition of ‘xenophobia’ could include Christian believers who assert that faith in Christ is the only means of salvation. A European Commission paper in 2002 provisionally defined ‘xenophobia’ to include ‘the belief in … religion or belief … as factors determining aversion to individuals or groups’. The offence of ‘xenophobia’ was stated as: ‘the public dissemination or distribution of tracts or other material containing expressions of xenophobia’.
Britain negotiated a deal under which the European Arrest Warrant would only apply if the alleged ‘racism or xenophobia’ was ‘likely to incite violence’, but had to concede a review after two years – when it is likely that arrests would be permitted if ‘racist or xenophobic’ statements ‘cause offence’.
