UK refuses to extradite US terrorist
BRITAIN has refused to extradite an American who fought with an Islamic terror group and who travelled to the UK despite being on a ‘no-fly’ list.
Muslim convert Brian Dempsey, 46, admitted to FBI agents in Rome that he had fought in Syria for the Al Qaeda ally Islamic Front before fleeing to Britain in 2014 – and has since resisted attempts to extradite him to the US.
District judge Kenneth Grant threw out the American extradition request at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last year after ruling that Dempsey’s conduct ‘did not amount to an extraditable offence’.
The case has emerged now because the US government successfully appealed against the ruling at the High Court earlier this month, in papers seen by The Mail on Sunday. The case will now go back to an extradition court.
Dempsey, from California, who was arrested in Derbyshire last year, is said to have converted to Islam while working as a youth counsellor with US prisoners.
US court papers say Dempsey had conspired to travel to Syria in July 2013 to ‘participate in combat’.
When, just six weeks later, he tried to return home via Rome, he was intercepted by FBI agents because he was on a no-fly list, which bans named individuals from travelling by plane to, from or within the US.
A former senior British terrorism officer said the US shared the list with Britain but added: ‘It is not a perfect system.’
After the first FBI interview, Dempsey returned to Syria and in January 2014, when he once again landed in Rome, he was intercepted by FBI agents. This time he
‘He told me he was doing janitorial work’
‘admitted he had travelled with the intention of fighting’ and had, according to the High Court judgment, told a witness ‘he had joined a group called Ahrar al-Sham in Azaz [a rebel-held Syrian city 20 miles from Aleppo] and, with that group, had engaged in fighting on two occasions’.
The High Court documents say Dempsey came to England in September 2014 and was arrested last year by police acting on the US extradition request. He was charged by the US government with ‘making a false statement involving international terrorism’.
His niece Veronica DeAngelo, 27, from Sacramento, said: ‘The FBI questioned the whole family. They believed that Brian had been involved in fighting. It was a shock. He would call me from England every now and again and told me he was doing janitorial work… he never sounded like an extremist.’
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We do not comment on matters of national security.’