One day our government will apologise for allowing this destroyer of basic British freedoms, the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), to be given legal status in the UK State of the EU. What more evidence does it need than the case of Edmond Arapi, a Staffordshire father of three, accused and convicted by Italian authorities of a murder, he didn't commit despite being able to prove that he was in England at the time. But, under the terms of the EAW, the evidence isn't tested before extradition is granted to an EU State with a very different idea of justice to that held by British subjects.

Unusually, this story had a happy ending but not before Mr Arapi spent a year fighting extradition.

As The Daily Mail reported on 15^th June:

 

"If extradited, Mr Arapi faced the 'nightmare' of being forced to part from his wife, a newborn baby and his two young daughters, aged three and seven, to spend years in a foreign jail.

Mr Arapi was arrested at Gatwick Airport on a European Arrest Warrant in June last year as he returned from a month-long holiday in Albania with his wife Georgina, whom he married in 2006.

His extradition was ordered in March by a district judge at Westminster Magistrates' Court. 

Before the dramatic U-turn by the Italian authorities, Mr Arapi had been facing the ordeal of a two-day High Court battle against removal.

But Gemma Lindfield, appearing for the prosecutors office of the Republic of Italy, withdrew the arrest warrant supporting the extradition request.

Lord Justice Pitchford, sitting with Mr Justice Maddison, asked: 'Got the wrong man?'

Ms Lindfield replied: 'Yes.'

Apologising for her '11th-hour' application, she said the Italian authorities had received information last week that the Italian judiciary 'may have had the wrong identity of the person sought for the murder of Castillo Marcello'.

Fair Trials International supported Mr Arapi's case, saying he had a 'compelling' alibi that he did not leave the UK between 2000/06. "