Traitor

Graham Watson MEP is a traitor to the British people, though quite obviously he wont see it that way, yet this man is behind the misery of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) in which British men and women can be dragged off abroad and held in foreign prisons on the most frivolous of charges.

Telegraph.

"The European Arrest Warrant should not be feared," says Graham Watson, the Liberal Democrat MEP who piloted the legislation through the European Parliament (as so often with things that really annoy Euro-sceptics, their authors turn out to be British.) "It is a crucial tool in ensuring criminals cannot hide behind national borders. It has brought justice to the perpetrators of murder, rape and terrorism."

I wonder what Edmond Arapi thinks of this claim?

Edmond Arapi, a Staffordshire waiter, was seized under an EAW issued by Italy after being sentenced to 16 years in absentia for a murder in Genoa in 2004. Yet he never left Britain in 2004. He spent time in Wandsworth prison before the Italians finally admitted it was a case of mistaken identity.

Or Deborah Dark.

Deborah Dark, who was cleared of drugs charges in France in 1989, found herself detained whenever she tried to travel. Unknown to her, French authorities had won an appeal against her acquittal in 1990. Fifteen years later, they issued an EAW, which was only dropped in May.

Colin Gabriel.

Colin Gabriel was demanded by Spain after a passport with his name on it was found in a boat that had been carrying drugs. He denied it was his and British judges said the evidence against him was "thin", but could not halt his extradition.

There are others.

Michael Turner, from Dorset, and Jason McGoldrick, from Plymouth, were extradited on an EAW and held without charge in Hungary, accused of owing business creditors £18,000. They spent nearly three months in tough jail conditions before police even interviewed them. They were freed after five months and have never been charged.

Even foreigners staying here have problems.

Dimitrinka Atanasova, a Bulgarian legal secretary, fled to Britain after threatening to expose her boss – the country's chief prosecutor – for misconduct. That same chief prosecutor then personally requested her extradition from Britain on what a British judge agreed were "bad-faith", or trumped-up, charges of murder. Crucially, her case predated Bulgaria's EU membership and adoption of the EAW. She was freed, after several months in Holloway Prison, but could be rearrested under a warrant at any time.

And there is a regular flight back to Poland from Biggin Hill in Kent of handcuffed Poles arrested and deported at the request of the Polish legal system often for such things as smoking cannabis, stealing a bicycle, or receiving a stolen mobile phone. The defendants will have been seized from their homes by a special police unit. They will often have been held in British custody, and will continue to be held, sometimes for months, until their appeals against extradition are dismissed, as they almost always are.
Yet the worst case is that of Andrew Symeou
hauled off to Greece on flimsy evidence obtained by assaulting witnesses none of whom appear to have correctly identified him as actually being where an assault took place, nor describing what he was actually wearing. So far he's was extradited last July.

Andrew, who, cannot speak Greek, spent almost a year in some of Europe's least civilised prisons. At Patras, he was unable to wash, and was taunted by the guards as an "English ------." They made him pack his kit with handcuffs on, laughing at his inability to manage it, then squeezed toothpaste into his bag, so he got to his next prison with toothpaste all over his clothes.
At Korydallos, he witnessed three riots. He would lie in bed, said his father, "and cockroaches would be dropping from above. He'd wake up in the morning with them crawling on him''.

So yes, Graham Watson MEP who guided this odious and dangerous bit of legislation through the EU, you are a traitor, you're ultimately responsible for the arrest and detention of scores of your fellow countrymen (then again he's a Scot so might not care all that much about the English) who are often held without trial for years in foreign prisons and you tell us that the European Arrest Warrant should not be feared. You've forced our legal system to hand over our people on the most flimsiest of evidence and prevented them from fact checking the evidence, nor of preventing flagrant abuses of the warrants themselves. It costs us money to hold the people that have been arrested under the EAW and if or when we hand them over, there are few safeguards as to how quickly they will be dealt with.
EUrophiles like you make me sick Graham Watson, even now I doubt you can see the harm you've done and the people now living in fear over your folly.
Sooner we leave the monstrosity of the EU the better, though it looks as if we'll have to bring down the government to do it, perhaps hanging a few like Graham Watson pour encourager les autres will remind the next generation of politicians to be more protective of the British people.