The high cost of lawfare

Washington Post:

The British government has paid nearly $900,000 in legal fees on behalf of three associates of Osama bin Laden who have fended off attempts by the U.S. government to extradite them for a decade, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The three al-Qaeda suspects were arrested in London shortly after the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed more than 200 people. British authorities pledged to extradite them swiftly to the United States to stand trial for their alleged role in the attacks.

But the cases have plodded through the British bureaucracy with no end in sight, undermining transatlantic cooperation on counterterrorism and highlighting how easy it can be for international terrorism suspects to elude the reach of U.S. prosecutors.

The stalled extraditions have proved expensive for British taxpayers. In Britain, as in the United States, the government covers legal expenses for criminal defendants who cannot afford lawyers. Critics say the combination of free lawyers and a byzantine legal system enables al-Qaeda sympathizers in Britain to file frivolous appeals and avoid deportation or extradition.

According to documents obtained by The Post under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, the U.K. Legal Services Commission has paid the equivalent of $371,207 in legal fees for Khalid al-Fawwaz, a Saudi citizen who served as bin Laden's public relations representative in London from 1994 until his arrest in 1998.

U.S. officials charge that Fawwaz played a key role in recruiting "military trainees" for al-Qaeda, served as a communications go-between, and gave logistical support to terrorist cells in Africa and Afghanistan. He is also accused of supplying bin Laden with a satellite phone that the al-Qaeda leader used to call Fawwaz and other associates in London more than 200 times.

The documents show that British taxpayers have covered $163,420 in legal bills for Adel Abdel Bary, an Egyptian confidant of al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Legal Services Commission said it also paid $323,149 in legal costs for Ibrahim Eidarous, another Egyptian fighting extradition to the United States. Eidarous died of leukemia in July while under house arrest in London. The commission did not provide a breakdown of the fees or disclose who received them.

According to U.S. court documents, investigators in London found fingerprints belonging to Abdel Bary and Eidarous on a fax sent to news organizations asserting that al-Qaeda was responsible for the 1998 embassy bombings.

U.S. officials have tried for years to speed up the extradition of terrorism suspects from Britain. In 2003, after acknowledging that its laws were cumbersome and arcane, Britain negotiated a new extradition treaty with the United States and passed a law designed to "fast track" extraditions to several countries.

Since then, however, Britain has handed over only one terrorism suspect to the United States: Syed Hashmi, a U.S. citizen charged with supplying military equipment to al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan. He was transferred to U.S. custody in May 2007 and is awaiting trial.

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Actually there are much worse lawfare cases in the UK. Terrorist cannot be deported many times for fear of torture and most wind up staying in the UK on Welfare and getting a house thrown in too. The welfare payments are quite generous, around $100,000. If you think we have problems with ICE in this country, the UK makes them look like a model of efficiency.

These three guys should have been flown to Gitmo and remained there for the duration of the war. Putting them through a lawfare model only aids the enemy and provides him with a blue print of our methods and sources for finding them. It is a big mistake for the US and the UK.