[rough justice] and the european arrest warrant

The case of Andrew Symeou has been covered in the media and I read of it in the Eye's current edition.

In a nutshell, the 20 year old student was holidaying in Zante, Greece and then came home to Britain. Meanwhile, two of his friends were taken into custody and there seems evidence that they were beaten and pressurized to sign a statement in Greek that they had seen him punch another young man so that he fell off a nightclub stage and later died.

I don't want to get into the rights or wrongs of that but there is a principle for all Brits in the matter of the EAW or European Arrest Warrant:

The magistrate at the preliminary hearing on 7th July at the Horseferry Road Magistrates Court made it plain that he had no power to consider the evidence against Mr Symeou, or the methods by which it was obtained from the witnesses, before agreeing to extradition.

The EU now has a system in place whereby you can be accused of a crime in another member country of the EU, let's say one of the Eastern European countries [and imagine if Turkey got in], automatically extradited and during that time, you can be incarcerated for up to a year, depending on the country, with no guarantee you won't be tortured as Mr Symeou seems to have been and with no rights vis a vis the process.

The current Frederick Toben issue is another case in point.

A friend of mine recently said that these days you should not mention the words British and Justice in the same breath and yet - which process would you prefer to be subject to? Neither, you say. Well yes, but what if you had to decide? It's fairly clear, one would have thought.

The issue is also one of vague grounds for arrest:

The new regulation has been significantly simplified in this regard: when the suspected crime is included on a so-called "positive list of criminal areas," then the criminal can be extradited.The problem however is that the list is too vague.

Then there is the problem of a crime in one country not being a crime in another. Wiki says:

EU law has direct effect within the legal systems of its Member States, and overrides national law in many areas, especially in areas covered by the Single Market.

Yet it doesn't, for example, in Italy. The Italians use the local police HQ, the Questura, for matters of sojourn in the country and have criminalized staying outside the visa. This means that not only are you subject to deportation, the normal consequence but you are also subject to criminal proceedings and penalties. The law even applies to Brits on British passports remaining after three months without a stamp - it is not automatic that you can go over there, work and live.

What many don't know is that when you cross the Italian border, you should obtain a stamp in your passport but if that stamp was obtained in another EU country on the way, the EU is satisfied but the Italians aren't. Further to that, the Schengen states on the Euro are treated differently to those which are within the EU but on their own currency.

In short, it is messy. One can go even further and question whether the EU even exists as a state able to make and enforce laws of its own. Lisbon was not ratified in Ireland and is in suspended animation right now.

So where does that leave the humble Brit, in his own country? Where does it leave the humble Englishman within Britain?