Associated Press
October 8, 2001

European human-rights leg­is­la­tion may hin­der Britain from extra­dit­ing sus­pects in the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks who could face the death penal­ty in the United States, a gov­ern­ment offi­cial said Sunday. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights bars Britain and the oth­er sig­na­to­ries from extra­dit­ing pris­on­ers if they could face cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. There is no death penal­ty in any of the 15 mem­ber nations of the European Union.

The Sunday Telegraph news­pa­per report­ed that Home Secretary David Blunkett had told American offi­cials he would approve extra­di­tion only if the United States waived the right to impose the death penal­ty. U.S. offi­cials may want to extra­dite Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot who
pros­e­cu­tors say instruct­ed some of the hijack­ers on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Raissi was arrest­ed in London Sept. 21 on a U.S. war­rant and could face charges of con­spir­a­cy to murder.

On Sunday, Blunkett acknowl­edged that the gov­ern­ment could ​“spend years los­ing” legal chal­lenges if it con­tra­vened Article 3. But he said he was not seek­ing a ​“blan­ket com­mit­ment” from the United States that the death penal­ty would not be imposed. Blunkett told the British Broadcasting Corp. that offi­cials would ​“find ways round the sit­u­a­tion.” He added: ​“We will ensure that we do what the rest of the world expect, which is to get peo­ple back to them when they’re a democ­ra­cy, when they have a per­fect­ly open and account­able judi­cial sys­tem and where they know that some­one is sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing out a terrorist act.”

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, European Union lead­ers agreed to stream­line extra­di­tion pro­ce­dures with­in the union and said they also want­ed to make it eas­i­er for sus­pects to be extra­dit­ed to the United States, but sought assur­ances from Washington that those hand­ed over will not face death sen­tences. Belgian Justice Minister Marc Verwilghen said at the time that extra­di­tion could not pro­ceed until the death penal­ty issue was resolved. ​“We always have said in the EU that the exe­cu­tion of the death penal­ty is not an option,” Verwilghen said.