Outrage At London Sting By U.S. Spies
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Courtesy Of: The Daily Mail
By Christopher Leake,
Mail on Sunday
Last Updated: 11th November 2006

Undercover American agents are staging secret 'sting' operations in Britain against criminal and terrorist suspects they want to extradite to the US.

• Comment: Beware: George Bush's secret agents can now arrrest us in our own country

In a recent operation, agents from America's Department of Homeland Security set up a suspect by posing as dealers wanting to illegally sell night-vision goggles for export to Iran.

The spies arranged a series of clandestine meetings in London hotels, which they secretly filmed as evidence. It is thought to be the first time American agents have been caught using such sting tactics in Britain.

Urgent questions were being asked about whether the British Government had been aware of the operation. If so, it raises issues of the State collaborating with foreign agencies to entrap suspects - and if not it raises the spectre of American spies working unchecked on British soil.

Human rights campaigners demanded an explanation from Home Secretary John Reid and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.

The case has provoked a huge row because the agents used tactics banned in Britain. In addition, the offence of which he is accused would not be a crime in this country. If British police officers had employed this type of sting, the ensuing case would almost certainly be thrown out of court.

In July 2003, ten defendants accused of laundering £15million walked free from Southwark Crown Court after Judge George Bathurst-Norman described police actions as 'massively illegal'. The judge said a police sting aimed at trapping them had 'overstepped the line between legitimate crime detection and unacceptable crime creation'.

...The sting operation also raises new questions about Britain's one-sided extradition arrangements with the United States, under which British citizens can be sent across the Atlantic for trial with ease.

It is much harder for British authorities to extradite American citizens to the UK.

...The sting comes just days after it was revealed that Home Office Ministers signed away crucial British extradition rights with America without holding a single meeting with their US counterparts.

The Government last month defeated attempts to block further 'fast-track' extraditions despite a rebellion by backbench Labour MPs.

Critics of the 2003 treaty claim that the burden of proof now required makes it too easy for US authorities to demand that British subjects stand trial in America, as demonstrated by the recent case of the NatWest Three.

...Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said last night: "We already have a one-sided extradition arrangement that allows people to be bundled off to America without so much as a by-your-leave. Now we have US agents operating in Britain entrapping people into criminality in the first place."

"The Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary must tell us the nature of these agents' operations in Britain."

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said last night: "The case of rendition flights to transport American prisoners for interrogation in other countries raised concerns about the degree to which the American security services run operations on British soil without the full knowledge of the British Government.

"Everyone wants the British and American security services to co-operate well, but we don't want a situation in which American authorities can act on British soil with complete impunity and without regard for British domestic law."

Source:
http://dailymail.co.uk/