Manzarpour, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department

Judgment

Mr Justice Burton :

The Claimant, a British citizen, makes a renewed application, after refusal by Collins J, for permission to apply for Judicial Review of the refusal by the Defendant, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, to state whether the United Kingdom has received a request for the Claimant’s extradition to the United States of America. At present the Claimant is in Iran, and wishes to know whether there has been an extradition request, because, if so, he will not return to the United Kingdom. In this regard this is similar, in an extradition context, to a case in which a United Kingdom citizen abroad wishes to know whether if he returns to the United Kingdom he will be arrested for a criminal offence, and if so he would remain abroad.

From 1977 until 2005 the Claimant lived in the United Kingdom, where he operated a registered export business. In February 2005 he travelled to Poland on a short business trip. On the final day of his visit he was arrested at Warsaw Airport pursuant to a United States extradition request. For the next 22 months he was detained in a high security prison while the United States sought his extradition from Poland to stand trial for breaching the United States’ embargo on trade with Iran through export transactions, which on his case took place exclusively outside the United States and were lawful and licensed under both United Kingdom and European Union law.

Among the documents presented by the Claimant on this application are statements made during his detention in Poland by British diplomats referring to the “unwarranted ‘extraterritoriality’ of US legal action” and a letter from the Head of the Directorate General for Trade at the European Commission describing the impugned transactions as having been “ in conformity with the relevant EU regulations ”. The Claimant’s case was raised on several occasions in the House of Lords.

On 10 December 2008 the District Court in Warsaw held that it would be unlawful to extradite the Claimant, on the basis that the United States’ request failed the test of dual criminality, since the exporting of an aircraft from the United Kingdom to Iran with a licence from the British authorities, notwithstanding any restrictions of American law, did not fulfil the prerequisite for amounting to an infringement of Polish law.

Notwithstanding the outcome of those extradition proceedings, certain enquiries made of his family or friends in the United Kingdom have caused h