Bush plan for military tribunals complicates efforts to extradite suspects from Europe

By Paul Geitner

Associated Press

BRUSSELS, Belgium – President Bush’s plan to try foreign terrorist suspects in military tribunals could further complicate arrangements to extradite defendants from Europe to the United States.

Secret hearings, fewer rights for the accused, and U.S. military officers as judge and jury could be seen as violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, said Guy De Vel, director general of legal affairs at the Council of Europe, which enforces the treaty on its 43 signatories.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and his European Union counterpart, Belgian Justice Minister Marc Verwilghen, have been in “almost continuous contact” in recent days on the issue, said Verwilghen’s spokesman, Joannes Thuy.

“One is looking for a solution if (Osama) bin Laden or whoever is arrested somewhere in Europe,” Thuy said.

Verwilghen, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, wants to present an agreement on extradition to his 14 EU counterparts at a meeting Dec. 6-7, Thuy said.

But the EU’s desire to show solidarity with the United States in the war against terrorism could be restricted by treaty obligations on human rights, EU officials and legal experts said.

The issue of extradition is already tangled because of European objections to the death penalty. EU countries, all of which have banned capital punishment, may not extradite suspects to countries where the death penalty is still used, unless that country guarantees the suspect will not face execution.

Such a promise allowed Germany to extradite Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, bin Laden’s suspected finance chief, who was arrested in 1998. He is on trial in New York on charges of helping plot the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa.

Bush’s new plan to forego civilian courts in favor of emergency military tribunals for suspected foreign terrorists could pose another potential roadblock.

“Clearly there could be a problem,” De Vel said. “I can imagine that some member states prefer to prevent such problems (by refusing the extradition request) rather than be confronted with them.”

The Spanish government announced last week that it would not extradite al-Qaida suspects it has in custody unless it receives guarantees that they will not be subject to capital punishment or military tribunals.

Bush intends to argue his case when he meets Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in Washington on Wednesday.

Another test case could be Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian flight instructor arrested in London shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Formal proceedings began Tuesday in London to extradite Raissi, who has been accused of training some of the hijackers who crashed a jet into the Pentagon.

However, prosecutors said the United States is so far only seeking to extradite him on charges of falsifying an application for a U.S. pilot’s license.

The military tribunal issue was not raised, and Raissi was ordered held pending further hearings.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office in London said Britain did not have a policy on extraditing suspects who might be tried by American military tribunals, but would consider each extradition request on its merits.

In all 43 Council of Europe nations, any extradition order could be appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, whose decisions are binding on all members.