A political storm has brewed over the proposed extradition of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, and with this in mind it is worth considering similar rows in other countries. Jamaica is not the only country which has signed an extradition treaty with the United States.

A famous British case was the NatWest Three. Also known as the Enron 3, Giles Darby, David Bermingham and Gary Mulgrew were three British bankers who got involved in the Enron scandal while working for financial services company National Westminster Bank. They were accused of conspiring with executives of the collapsed energy company Enron to defraud their employers to the tune of $7.3 million.

In 2002 they were indicted in the US courts. They then led a high-profile public campaign here in the United Kingdom to avoid being extradited to the United States. They were successful in drawing attention away from the nature of their crimes (fraud and embezzlement) and focusing public attention on the fact of extradition. They and their advisors rode on the latent anti-Americanism which exists in all smaller countries. Serious newspapers campaigned on their behalf. Much was made of the unequal nature of the treaty and other technical legal matters.

In fact, they had everything to fear from being extradited to the United States. England is notoriously a “soft touch” for banking fraud. But America prides itself on being prepared to imprison delinquent bankers. The leading Republican politician and one-time Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani first gained fame as the New York District Attorney. He was notorious for marching bankers and financiers suspected of fraud out of their offices with handcuffs on. Such a thing would be unthinkable in Britain.

The NatWest 3 fought extradition in the courts for years with the help of expensive lawyers and lobbyists. But in the end they could delay the process no longer. In 2006, four years after they were first indicted, they were extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States. Despite their protestation of innocence, when the case reached the courts in 2007, they each pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 37 months in prison. In 2008 the American authorities announced that they would spend the rest of their sentences in the UK and would be released at the end of 2009.

Another extradition case in the UK relates to the Gary McKinnon campaign. McKinnon is a 44-year-old computer hacker who is facing extradition to the US for hacking into US military computer systems. The US prosecutors describe it as “the biggest computer hack of all time”. McKinnon has fought extradition for over five years in the British courts. He also has a high-profile public campaign supported by a number of newspapers and fronted by his mother. Her argument is that because her son has a learning difficulty (Asperger Syndrome) it is not fair to send him to trial in the United States.

It has been proven, time and again, that it is possible to whip up nationalistic feelings against extradition here in the United Kingdom. But the first step in fighting an extradition request is to take the matter before the courts. Hopefully, before too long, this will happen in the Dudus case. But if the British examples are anything to go by, it will be some time before we see a resolution of this matter.