‘The Extradition Treaty with the US is a hangover from the most authoritarian part of Tony Blair’s rule and the resultant treatment of my brother and the others is an affront to any notion of human rights, habeas corpus or the possibility of a fair trial.’ Hamja Ahsan (FRFI 128 – August/September 2012)
On 5 October, after years of legal battle, two British citizens Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, were extradited to the US, a country neither of them had previously ever set foot in. They are now being held in prison in Connecticut and their trials have been scheduled for October 2013.
In April the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rejected legal challenges brought by Talha and Babar – along with Adel Abdel Bary, Khalid Al Fawwaz and Mustafa Kamal Mustafa (Abu Hamza) – to the British government’s acquiescence to requests to extradite them to the US on terrorism charges. On 24 September their application to appeal against this decision to the ECtHR’s Grand Chamber was rejected and on 5 October the High Court in London rejected a further application for judicial review of the extradition decisions. Even as the court sat in London, two separate US jet-planes were being prepared for take-off, and by the next day all the men had had their first court appearances.
For a detailed account of Talha and Babar’s struggle against extradition, see our article Extradition to Isolation:
Extradition to isolation / 228 Aug/Sep 2012
And watch the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s film Extradition:
For further information, see : http://freetalha.org/ and www.freebabarahmad.com
