The Extradition Act 2003 (
c.41) is an
Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the Parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom, supreme Legislature, legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of We ...
which regulates
extradition
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisd ...
requests by and to the United Kingdom. The Act came into force on 1 January 2004. It transposed the
European Arrest Warrant framework decision into British law and implemented the UK side of the controversial
UK–US extradition treaty of 2003 before the treaty came into force in April 2007 after being ratified by the US Senate in 2006.
Provisions
The Act is divided into five parts.
*Parts 1 and 2 deal with "category 1" and "category 2" territories respectively. While it is not mentioned in the Act, category 1 territories are all other member states of the European Union and Part 1 of the Act is the United Kingdom's implementation of the
European Arrest Warrant framework decision. Part 2 of the Act is concerned with extradition to all other countries which have an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom.
*Part 3 deals with issuing European Arrest Warrants from the UK and extradition requests.
*Part 4 regulates powers of arrest, search and seizure regarding individuals subject to European Arrest Warrants and extradition warrants.
*Part 5 contains miscellaneous provisions including extradition to and from
British overseas territories
The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Br ...
.
The procedure used by the courts is set down in the Criminal Procedure Rules 2015, part 50.
Examination by Parliament
The Act has been examined in two reviews by Parliament. The first in 2011 by Sir Scott Baker making a series of recommendations and the second examination by the House of Lords Extradition Law Committee in 2014.
As a result of campaigning and scrutiny by Parliament, several important amendments were made in 2014 in the