UK Extradition Arrangements

Andrew Smith Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I join in the congratulations given to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and other colleagues on securing the debate. I believe that our extradition procedures need to be kept under review and protection afforded against the abuses and potential abuses that others have mentioned.

Like many constituents who have contacted me, I sympathise with Gary McKinnon for his plight and agree that if he is to face trial, it would be much better if it could be in the United Kingdom, where the alleged offence occurred. I take the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made about the wider challenges that we face in the global context, and about how we all have to focus on addressing those challenges.

I also wish to add my voice to those of Members who have raised the case of Babar Ahmad. It cannot be acceptable that someone is held without trial for as long as he has been. To pick up on a point that was made earlier, it is encouraging that if there is a change to the law, it will affect pending cases, so he will no longer face the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen to him, or even when he will find out what will happen to him.

Given the limited time, I want to focus on the case of one of my constituents, Mr Benny Wenda. Benny was granted refugee status in the United Kingdom in 2003 as a result of his well-founded fears of persecution by the Indonesian Government, who disapprove of his activities advocating self-determination for the West Papuan people. He has subsequently been granted British citizenship. In granting him refugee status and then citizenship, the British Government accepted a protective duty towards Benny, but they now appear to be refusing to defend him against the same Government from whom he was granted protection in the first place.

The Indonesian Government have issued an Interpol red notice against Benny for the alleged crimes that he was accused of when he first came to the UK, which will have been considered when he was granted refugee status. Yet a letter that I have had from the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), states that the Government will not comment on the red notice; will not confirm or deny the existence of an extradition request; will not preclude the possibility of extradition; will not contact other Governments to ask whether they intend to arrest Benny as he travels to make the case for West Papuan self-determination throughout the world; and will not even contact the Indonesian Government to make a complaint about their continued pressure on him. The letter states:

“The issue of a red notice is a matter for the issuing state”,

but it does not appear to accept that the protection of a British citizen is very much a matter for the state of which he is a citizen.

I ask the Minister for Immigration, who will be responding to the debate, whether there is any situation in which he would give an undertaking not to extradite a refugee to the country from which he or she had been granted protection. I suggest that it would not interfere with the sovereignty of other nations simply to ask them whether they would arrest someone, in this instance Benny Wenda, if they stepped on their soil. For the UK Government to refuse to ask that of a country that my constituent would have legitimate reason to visit seems to me an abdication of their most basic responsibility—to protect their own citizens.

I ask the Government to reconsider what seems to me to be a hastily cobbled together stance on the matter and accept a meeting of Ministers from the Home Office and Foreign Office, Benny, his representatives and me specifically to discuss the red notice. My constituent’s example shows how other Governments, including repressive regimes, can use or abuse the red notice system to intimidate refugees and inhibit their freedom of travel and freedom of speech. As others have said, our Government should stand up for British citizens who are threatened in such a way, and I urge them to do so in this case.