Extradition of alleged terrorists.

political analyst

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10702921/BBC-hands-police-footage-retired-Catholic-priest-91-admitting-role-IRA-bomb-attacks.html

The BBC has handed over footage of an interview of Ryan for the documentary series 'Spotlight on the Troubles' to the Metropolitan Police.

According to an article written by Dan Fisher and published in the Los Angeles Times on 3 December 1988, the Belgian authorities said that the British demand for extradition was not compliant with Belgian extradition standards. Thatcher didn't believe that. British critics claimed that Belgium was afraid of becoming a target for terrorists. Ryan had been on hunger strike and was then sent by the Belgians to Ireland.

The dispute between the British and Irish governments about extradition of alleged terrorists during the Troubles is well-documented. However, Belgium already had, and still has, a lot in common with Britain, i.e. democracy with a ceremonial monarch, NATO. So why would the Belgian government have had a problem with the British authorities' demand for Ryan's extradition? Surely, the history of relations between Britain and Belgium throughout the 20th Century should have overrode unwillingness to extradite a suspected terrorist to Britain, shouldn't it have?

Peregrinus

I don't see how having a ceremonial monarch or being a member of NATO comes into this at all. What could be relevant, though, is that at the time the UK and Belgium were both EU member states.

I haven't see the footage or read the Daily Mail article - I wouldn't really regard the Daily Mail as a reliable source for factual information.

But, based on what's in the post:

First point to note is that this happened in the 1980s. Although both UK and Belgium were EU member states in those happy days, this is before the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant. I'm open to correction here, but I think back in the 1980s extraditions between Belgium and the UK would have been governed by the European Convention on Extradition, a multilateral treaty emerging not from the EU but from the Council of Europe, an older, larger and entirely different body.

And I think the problem the UK would have run up against is Article 3 para 1 of the Convention:

"Extradition shall not be granted if the offence in respect of which it is requested is regarded by the requested Party as a political offence or as an offence connected with a political offence."

Ryan (from his Wikipedia page) was accused of being part of an IRA cell engaged in attacking British soldiers; it wouldn't be hard to make the case that this was a political offence. Furthermore, the actions that he was accused of had all taken place in Belgium and/or the Netherlands, not in the UK. And, by Article 7 para 1:

"The requested Party may refuse to extradite a person claimed for an offence which is regarded by its law as having been committed in whole or in part in its territory or in a place treated as its territory."

Most countries are slow to extradite people accused of crimes committed within their own borders on the thinking that, if they are not going to try the person in relation to those crimes, they should not send them abroad for someone else to try them.

So, there are a couple of reasons why Belgium might not have been keen to send Ryan to the UK. Those reasons were never very likely to be overborne by the fact that Belgium has a ceremonial monarch.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118919405#Comment_118919405

Sincerely, I'm quite impressed by this and all your other responses to my queries. I'm not a lawyer but I think that the point of not extraditing for a political offence if you wouldn't have prosecuted the suspect for that offence, which was committed in the country seeking the extradition, if it was committed in your country is an echo of the principle of dual criminality.