Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, which provides that everyone has a right to respect for his private and family life, is raised as a bar to extradition in a majority of cases. It is, of course, not an absolute right, as a public authority can interfere with the exercise of this right ‘in accordance with the law’ and where it is necessary, for amongst other things ‘the prevention of disorder or crime’.
There has now a substantial volume of case law dealing with Article 8 challenges and it is fair to say that the majority of it is in favour of extradition.
However, there are occasions when an Article 8 argument can be successful. As an example, I recently acted for a Polish lady, whose extradition was sought in relation to an offence of fraud committed in 2000. She had obtained a loan of about £500 from a bank in Poland by amending her pay slips and had not repaid the money. She had committed no other offence in Poland, or in this country, where she had lived since 2005. She was originally given a suspended sentence of 8 months imprisonment. One of the conditions was that she repaid the money. Unfortunately she did not repay the money and the suspended sentence was activated.
I successfully argued that returning her to Poland to serve her sentence would be a disproportionate breach of her article 8 rights. The District Judge took into account the fact that she would be unlikely to have received a custodial sentence in this country, and that she had now repaid the money.
As a result, the client is now continuing to live her law abiding life in this country; and she got a costs order in her favour, so she was able to get some of her costs back!
Please note that the information contained in this article was correct at the time of writing. There may have been updates to the law since the article was written, which may affect the information and advice given therein.
