Monday 27 July 2009

Deborah Dark

From The Telegraph:

Deborah Dark was held in a high-security prisonin Madrid after being arrested on arrival while travelling with daughter and one-year-old twin grandsons. Spanish police were acting on an extradition order from France of which Mrs Dark was unaware.

Mrs Dark, a housekeeper-secretary to a foreign diplomat based in London, eventually realised that the problem stemmed from an incident in France 20 years ago, when she was acquitted of a drugs offence – and from the controversial system of European Arrest Warrants, which were designed to make extradition easier but which have been criticised for being overused and for having no inbuilt time limits.

Now, even after judges in Britain and Spain threw out a request from France to extradite her, Mrs Dark remains too frightened to travel abroad, and Fair Trials International, the campaigning group, claims that her case highlights flaws in the arrest warrant system.

The warrants have already proved controversial in cases such as that of Dr Fredrick Toben, the Australian-based academic who was arrested at Heathrow last year on a warrant issued by German authorities over charges of Holocaust denial, which is an offence in Germany but not in Britain. He was later freed...

0 comments: