The Holocaust denier, Frederick Toben, has been released from custody after the German government gave up its legal battle to extradite him from Britain.
This was all under the European Arrest Warrant of course. Sadly though, it's not really cleared up the law, rather, it has muddied it.
"I said, 'We will go all the way to the House of Lords with this and let the House of Lords decide'. But when the draft extradition Act passed through the House of Lords in 2002, one of the questions was what would happen if someone was arrested on a European arrest warrant to be extradited to a country where Holocaust denial is an offence.
"The response was, 'No, that will never happen'."
This was a political deal: this particular person will not be extradited. But we'll still be liable to being extradited for things which are not an offence in this country, things which lack dual criminality. It'll depend rather on whether the person accused has enough political (or financial) weight to fight it and that isn't justice as we either know it or want it to be.
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