Man extradited from UAE to UK is jailed over killing

First person be sent from the UAE to Britain sent to prison, but fears grow for future of treaty as move was not reciprocated.

LONDON // The first person to be extradited from the UAE to Britain was jailed yesterday for his part in the killing of a disabled man. The conviction of Jeleel Ahmed - who was cleared of murder but convicted of perverting the course of justice - came as lawyers began to question the efficacy of new extradition arrangements between the countries.

Ahmed, 28, was cleared by a jury at Birmingham Crown Court of involvement in the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Shanwaz Ali, but was jailed for two-and-half years for perverting justice. He was accused of acting as the driver for two "assassins" who stabbed Mr Ali, a muscular dystrophy sufferer who could only walk a short distance, outside his home in Birmingham in January 2006. However, the jury accepted that Ahmed had not known in advance of the plot to kill Mr Ali and took no part in the attack.

Mr Ali's family expressed disappointment at the outcome. "We are all really upset at today's sentence. It was nowhere near long enough," said Mr Ali's uncle at the family home in Sparkhill, Birmingham. "All the family were in court and very disappointed with the result. We are not happy one bit. Everybody is in shock and completely gutted." Ahmed created a small piece of legal history when he was flown from Dubai to Britain last year under an extradition treaty signed between the two nations in 2008.

It had taken three years to get Ahmed back to Britain. Police who had initially interviewed him, released him on bail only to see him flee to Dubai. Efforts to have him returned for trial were unsucessful until the extradition treaty came into effect. Although his return was hailed as a new chapter in legal ties between the UAE and Britain, fundamental questions now surround the future of the extradition treaty in the wake of a High Court ruling in London.

In March, two judges blocked the extradition to the UAE of a convicted drugs producer on the grounds that he might be mistreated in Dubai. The case involved Mohammed Lodhi, a 52-year-old businessman whom the Dubai authorities had been trying to extradite from the UK for a decade. Lodhi was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by the Dubai First Court of Instance in 1999 after being convicted of producing the class B drug Mandrax at his business premises in Dubai.

Although no extradition treaty existed at the time, the Dubai authorities requested that Lodhi be sent back under the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, which facilitates extraditions in a bid to counter the worldwide drugs trade. The case became Britain's longest running lawsuit against extradition before finally concluding when the High Court judges ruled against, saying that there was a real risk that Lodhi would have been subjected to inhuman treatment had he been returned to Dubai.

Andrew Smith, a lawyer at the law firm that represented Lodhi, accepted that the ruling could hamper British attempts to extradite suspects from the UAE. "The experience of other relationships is that, when the UK is more thoughtful about whether to extradite someone and refuses to do so, the number of people the UK manages to get back has dried up as well," he said. "The judgment of the court is significant for other cases under the recent extradition treaty between the UK and the UAE."

Lodhi had died of a heart attack six weeks before the ruling. [e-mail]