Brexit threatens to reopen old wounds about extradition
THE start of the New Year always provides great information for political anoraks with the publication of governmental documents, under the 30-year rule in the case of this State, and in Britain from 20 years ago.
The documents released shed new light on the events from decades ago, which may have convulsed both nations at that time, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict on this island.
For me, the publication of these papers from 30 years ago is a reminder of my initiation into national politics. The papers released in the last week or so relate to 1987, the year I was first elected to Leinster House as a TD representing Louth. A lot of the documents refer to the handover from the Garret FitzGerald government to a new minority government led by Charlie Haughey, and particularly deal with how Mr Haughey’s government would handle the Anglo-Irish Agreement and other related issues.
One matter which had been a very thorny political issue around that time was extradition.
Historically if a defendant claimed that they had a political motivation for a cross-border crime, the Irish courts generally refused to extradite them abroad. Over the previous years, this had caused huge difficulty in the context of the Troubles. The outgoing Fine Gael government had endeavoured to bring in an amendment to the extradition law so as to ensure that paramilitaries, who used the border as an escape, could be extradited back to the North for trial.
INDEED, the archive documents released in recent days show how Haughey emphasised to Margaret Thatcher that the Fianna Fáil party was convulsed over this issue. He pleaded with her to accept that the amended procedures, which he was proposing to put in place, should be allowed to work, but clearly from the British papers published they were greatly dissatisfied with his response.
From my own personal perspective, being a newly elected deputy from the border town of Dundalk at the time, I was at the coal face in regard to the practical difficulties of extradition from the South to the North.
In previous years, we had witnessed some very unedifying scenes whereby suspects were brought to the border, under Garda escort, only to be confronted by hostile crowds preventing them from being handed over to the RUC, on the other side of the border. Obviously, these types of scenes made major international news, and did not reflect well on the relationships between the two governments, nor, indeed, on my hometown area.
As the amended legislation was being put through Leinster House, deputies including myself were put under extreme pressure to vote against the legislation. I recall a number of Independent deputies threatening to withdraw support from Haughey’s minority government if the legislation went through.
The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meetings discussed the extradition crisis on a weekly basis in 1987. At one meeting, I stated that the people of my town were more worried about unemployment and the health crisis than the issue of extradition, which, I added, wasn’t a huge issue in peo- ple’s daily lives. A Sunday newspaper quoted this. Within a week, my constituency office was picketed by members of Sinn Féin, who stated that if I didn’t feel that it was a huge issue, they would make it an issue for me.
The pickets, outside my office, continued for weeks, with individuals, from the picket line coming into my office, one by one, to discuss extradition with me. To say the least, as a newly elected deputy, I felt under severe pressure.
One of the people orchestrating the pickets was later sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for possession of explosives. Politically, I stuck to my guns, as believed that people who were responsible for carrying out atrocities should not be allowed to use the border as a way of evading justice.
All of this seems very much in the distant past, but at the time it caused huge controversy. This is borne out by the revelations in the archive documents released this week. Over time, the issue of extradition became less and less controversial. The ongoing peace process talks tended to defuse controversial issues such as extradition.
ANOTHER calming influence was the relationship between our two islands getting better through our ongoing membership of the European Union.
Brussels started moves to streamline extradition procedures across the borders of EU member states by bringing in the European Arrest Warrant procedure. This meant that, right across the EU, the same rules applied when one member state wished to have a suspect extradited from another member state.
With the implementation of this, it took the heat out of the vexed question of transferring suspects across the border from the South to the North and to the UK. What had been a huge controversy 30 years ago became a matter of normal procedure as it was now going to be dealt with under the umbrella of the EU.
All of this raises the question: what happens post-Brexit in the context of extradition? Unless Britain, and Northern Ireland, commit to implementing the European Arrest Warrant law to the letter, conceivably we could be back to the bad old days of a ‘tug of war’ across our border.
During the recent Brexit talks, the phrase ‘regulatory alignment’ was very much to the fore. Generally, it was assumed this alignment related to issues such as trade, agriculture and other similar matters.
Little or no mention has been made of topics such as extradition in the recent talks. Sooner or later, before we sleepwalk into another extradition crisis, the EU and the two governments need to explain how this issue will be handled, in a post-Brexit scenario.