Roger Helmer, MEP has voiced his concern over the proposed changes to the EAW. On his blog, he says:

 

"Next April, Britain is expected to sign up to the next stage of the European Arrest Warrant (there's always a next stage with any aspect of European integration). This is called Schengen Information II. It will ensure that anyone against whom a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is issued will be detained and deported automatically."

 

The comments are worth reading. I said:

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At last the case of Andrew Symeou is beginning to gain some column inches, this time in The Sunday Times. The paper makes the basic points:

Andrew Symeou, 20, was imprisoned in a tiny cell and forced to sleep on a concrete block with five other prisoners in police detention on the Greek island of Zante, his father Frank said last week.

Symeou, from Enfield, north London, is accused of killing a fellow British teenager with a punch in a Zante nightclub in 2007. He was extradited 10 days ago under the fast-track European arrest warrant.

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I stumbled across this on Gwain Towler's blog: I repeat it with a feeling of great sadness for both Andrew and English law:
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David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden and doughty defender of Liberty (at least that's what his website says) has a curious lacuna. That is anything to do with the European Union. He will stand up and sit down on issues such as 42 day detention, yes. And good for him. He will go to the barricades to oppose Id cards, and so say all of us.

But when it comes to the European Arrest Warrant he goes strangely silent. Today the Law Lords have released their decision on the Symeou case.

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Today, July 6^th 2009, we celebrate not just the accession of Richard 1^st, but 820 years of English law, or Common Law. Common Law has given most English speaking peoples throughout the free world, freedom from oppression. Sir Winston Churchill's strong words on the huge differences between Common Law are repeated at "Both sovereign and subject are bound by 820 years of the Common Law". Read and see how clearly one British Minister understood the threat to the English citizen, of the Roman Law system in use in most of the EU.

 

Sir Winston says: "Under Roman law, and systems derived from it, a trial in those turbulent centuries, and in some countries even today, is often an inquisition. The judge makes his own investigation into the civil wrong or the public crime, and such investigation is largely uncontrolled. The suspect can be interrogated in private. He must answer all questions put to him. His right to be represented by a legal adviser is restricted. The witness against him can testify in secret and in his absence. And only when these processes have been accomplished is the accusation or charge against him formulated and published. Thus often arises secret intimidation, enforced confessions, torture, and blackmailed pleas of guilty."

 

and the take over by the EU, and its Roman Law system, rushes on regardless, encouraged by our spineless politicians.

"Andrew Symeou has won the right to take his fight against extradition to the House of Lords ... A panel of Law Lords will shortly decide whether to agree on a full hearing" says Private Eye, Issue 1239, page 9, under the Brussels Sprouts column.

As Private Eye also says, this is "a blow to the status of the EU's controversial European arrest warrants (EAWs)." For more information on this case and its wider implications, see:

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"The logic of the government's position would be to take every man, woman and child in the country and put them on the database just in case. . The bigger the database the greater the risk for accident error and abuse." Shami Chakrabarti, head of Liberty, on the BBC's Today programme May 7^th, 2009

All those who are worried about the slow destruction of fundamental freedoms would do well to listen to last Thursday's Today programme debate on the government's DNA database. The debate goes to the root of the Westminster government's thinking (caught from the EU, no doubt) that if it could only know more and more about us and have greater control over our lives then it could make life safer for us all. I reject that mind set out of hand as incredibly dangerous and naïve. The interviews will be available for a few more days at The BBC Radio 4 Podcast site. Listen and understand the yawning gap. Gasp at the lack of understanding of the problem, and the anti-freedom agenda that is totally misunderstood by this government's ministers. Note also the distortion of the facts, so ably brought into clear focus by Shami Chakrabarti when she points out  .....

 

[Photo: Empty Justice]

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