Tuesday, July 18, 2006

The FT's line

On the NatWest ThreeThe Financial Times says in a leader, 11 July: 'Three British men stand accused of a serious crime [...] for which they could be tried, quite legitimately, in a US court.' They seem to think everything would be OK if only the US senate ratified the extradition treaty. Their line, then, is more or less the same as the Labour government's.
(link, you need to be a subscriber to read the whole thing, but you get the general idea anyway.)

I would imagine that they now find John-Paul Flintoff's article something of an embarassment. He works for The Sunday Times now, I understand. The FT also carried a letter two days later: 'On the facts in the public domain, it seems entirely plausible that the US prosecutors could have constructed a prima facie case against the NatWest Three if they were obliged to... if we expect to be able to try foreign businessmen accused of offences damaging British property or interests in the UK, I cannot for the life of me see what is to be objected to in being tried by, for example, a US, German or French court if offences are alleged to have been committed in those jurisdictions.'

By contrast, The Economist, which I believe is also owned by the FT group, has this: 'The suspects are British; their victim is British; virtually all the alleged wrongful dealing was carried out in Britain.…' (again, subscriber-only etc)

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