The end of Habeas Corpus in Britain (No Rights for YOU. Masters in Brussels have spoken, serf!)

Parapundit / England's Sword ^ | Iain Murray

[jb6]

A lawyer, based in Italy, whose judgment I trust, sends me the following about the implementation of the European Arrest Warrant in the UK:

I have just received a copy of a letter from Leolin Price Q.C. which he sent to to Blunkett on Oct 4th criticising the European Arrest Warrant. This letter apprises me of certain facts.

Now I have been spending my time for months trying to bring this measure to public attention, for it will expose British citizens to being arrested and summarily deported into 14 alien systems of laws about which we know hardly anything, except that none of those on the continent have Habeas Corpus or Trial by Jury, so thousands of prisoners are kept in prison for months on end "pending investigation" and during this time have no right to any public hearing and there is no obligation on the prosecution to exhibit any evidence, so indeed they need not actually *have* any evidence at all!

I learn now from Leolin Price's letter that the legislation coming before Parliament to implement the EAW will actually be even worse than I had imagined. Three aspects that I was not fully aware of before:

1) The Home Secretary will reserve for himself the power to designate (by administrative decision, no future parliamentary debate needed) "appropriate persons" who may carry out the European arrests; this, Mr Price suggests, could be a foreign police officer from the state issuing the warrant. Or, I would add, it could be an agent of the Europolizei when they are fully up and running, uniformed and armed...

2) The arresting person does not have to have a warrant, nor show any warrant to the person being arrested (unless he asks[!] in which case he gets to see it "as soon as possible after [!] his arrest") and there does not even have to BE a warrant, provided that the arresting person "has reason to believe that a ...warrant has been, *or*will*be*, issued" by one of the EU states!!!

3) And the warrant need not describe the actual act that the arrestee is supposed to have committed; the pre-printed form of the warrant simply lists the 32 "types of offence" with a box ticked next to the one that they want to use... E.g. they just tick say "xenophobia" without specifying what you are supposed to have done (or said) that was xenophobic.

So in practice we must suppose that you can get dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and hauled off to jail, and by the way have all your teeth knocked out if it is Europol doing it. Yes this is not so far-fetched as it might sound, Europol officers are already "immune from prosecution", on charges of brutality or any other offence, so they will say, "Well, why shouldn't we put the boot in? Perhaps the prisoner will confess, and that will save us all a lot of trouble and expense, as well as earning us brownie points towards promotion.". If this is to be dismissed as a fanciful scenario, will someone please explain to me why the dickens Europol has to be given immunity???

And then you are told that a Warrant will be issued against you or, if you are so lucky, you actually see a warrant where it just says you are being arrested for "xenophobia" with no further details, then you are trussed up and with minimum formality and no protection from British courts shipped off say to Cadiz in Spain where you await the pleasure of the investigating/prosecuting "judge" for months and months in prison, with no public hearing and no obligation on the prosecutor to exhibit any evidence against you during this time.

This legislative monstrosity is going to tear apart the fabric of our society.

Just think of how it can be combined with article 191 of the treaty of Nice, already on our statute books just awaiting the OK from Ireland, which grants the power to the EU to draw up - by majority voting - "regulations governing political parties". These regulations could easily say that (loosely defined!) "xenophobic" political parties are not to be allowed... after all banning political parties is already current practice in many countries of continental Europe. Only in Britain do we believe that our political freedom must be absolute. But we will have no veto. So what will happen to people who defy the ban? No prizes for guessing, with the EAW to hand ...

Of course, once the EAW is in place it will be followed up swiftly by the introduction of the European Public Prosecutor and Corpus Juris, as was debated at the Bar Conference last month [!!!], and then the Europol squads will be stationed everywhere, uniformed, and armed, not only with guns like all continental policemen, but with this quite extraordinary, unjustified and unjustifiable immunity from prosecution whatever they do, that places them completely above the law!

I am amazed astonished and outraged that in their annual conference the Tory leadership made no reference to the EAW at all, but preferred to leave their delegates, and the public at large, completely in the dark about this impending disaster.

So this talk of a "secret plan" now, directed only at their Eurosceptic critics like us, of "Trust us, once we are in power we will show the EU what's what" looks to me like a sly attempt at the usual con trick, just to get us to carry on voting for them. To be believed they will have to change their PUBLICLY STATED policies now, AND come clean and make a thorough purge of those past leaders who got us into this deadly swamp, starting with Edward Heath who has said he lied quite deliberately when he told Parliament the Treaty of Rome "would have no effect on our essential sovereignty", and ending with Michael Howard who when Home Secretary boasted in Parliament that under his stewardship Britain was the first state to sign up to the Europol agreement.

The first thing the Tories must do if they want us to take them seriously is to stop blethering ambivalently about "renegotiating" but simply TELL THE PUBLIC THE FACTS about what will happen to each and every one of us if Britain stays in much longer.

They have missed this important opportunity of their annual conference and I am seriously beginning to doubt if they, or the country, will get another one.

Some of the recipients of this email could also do something to tell the public about this. I am hoping they will do so.

[little jeremiah]

Unbe-freaking-lievable.

I'm speechless. Are there any Britons with balls? Or any intelligence? Are any of them awake?

Other than this gentleman, of course.

[stylin19a]

and the SCOTUS wants to use international law to resolve US Constitutional issues.....beam me up scotty

[endthematrix]

I'm skeptical this this is under the guise of anti-terror laws. If any US "civil lib" has problems with US law, they must go into melt down over GB anti-terror laws. You can be detained (now this is going years back) for weeks just for questioning. In post 9/11 I'm sure it's indefinitely. I'm skeptical because political groups fail to define the terminology of "citizen", "resident" or "immigrant", etc

[ScaniaBoy]

Thanks for posting these articles jb6, but you should point out the fact that most of them are a few years old.

The European arrest warrant has been passed. We have already had cases in Sweden where Swedish citizens have extradited to other European countries, without any evidence being presented in Swedish courts.

However, now follows the next step. According to new EU-regulations, prosecutors in other countries will have the right to order (yes - ORDER) Swedish police to make house searches, confiscation of evidence etc of Swedish citizens in Sweden.

The Guild of Swedish Lawyers have reacted fiercely, since they feel that with this rule we no longer have the rule of law in the country. They have tried to engage our elected politicians in a debate, but to no avail.

[neverdem]

bump & a ping

[ikka]

No! This is impossible, because the Euro's are sooo much more enlightened than us idiot Americans!!!

[AmericanArchConservative]

this is not good news!

Bump for later reading.

[frankiep]

I'm absolutely speechless

[Anglo]

You will find both these links very informative JB6.

Regards

Anglo

http://www.magnacarta.demon.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.brugesgroup.com/