What is the US-UK Extradition Act?

The Extradition Act governs how Britain requests and obtains the surrender of a suspected or convicted criminal from another nation and vice versa.

The 2003 Act itself applies not only to the US, but to all our extradition partners. Some 47 other countries have exactly the same agreement with us. These countries include Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Chile, the Cook Islands, Macedonia, Jamaica, Kenya and the Russian Federation. There is also Turkey, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Canada, and the United States of America.

The new extradition treaty with the US which forms part of the Extradition Act 2003 was signed by the then Home Secretary and former US Attorney General in 2003. It replaces the bilateral treaty negotiated in 1972 and supplemented in 1986. The treaty was negotiated following the procedures laid down in the Ponsonby Rule – the same way as treaties have been negotiated since 1924.

Members to the convention do not require prima facie evidence from one another. By the end of 2003, the convention applied between almost all European states, including Russia and other former Soviet states, which are all members of the Council of Europe, as well as to Israel and South Africa. The convention still applies to our extradition arrangements with all of these states except for those which have joined the European Union, with which we operate the European arrest warrant mechanism.

There has been some discussion about equal rights for US and UK citizens. Before the Extradition Act 2003 was passed, the bar for the US to extradite people from the United Kingdom was much higher, and was based on prima facie evidence. For the UK to extradite people from the US, the requirement was probable cause but, as a result of the 2003 Act, we have come into line. One could characterise the requirement as one of reasonable suspicion, but the reciprocal arrangement is based on the fact that it is not just identification that is required. Sufficient information is needed to issue a warrant for arrest. The UK does not require prima facie evidence from many of the countries on the list, because we trust their judicial systems.