Extradition

Home Office guidance opens with a plain-English statement of the concept: 'Extradition is the formal process where one country asks another to return a person in order to stand trial or to serve a sentence.' The scope of the UK's extradition relationships is broad: 'Under multilateral conventions and bilateral extradition treaties the UK has extradition relations with over 100 territories around the world.'

Which procedure applies to a given request depends on how the requesting territory is categorised under the Extradition Act 2003. Part 1 of the Act governs 'category 1 territories' — broadly, EU member states plus a small number of others — using a warrant-based process with tight statutory timescales, while Part 2 governs 'category 2 territories', where requests generally require a decision by the Secretary of State as well as the courts. Even where the UK has no formal extradition treaty with a territory, the guidance notes that it may still be possible for that territory to make a request, which the Secretary of State can then decide whether to act on under special arrangements.