[2025] EWHC 2783 (Admin)

A requested person must be discharged if extradition is incompatible with Convention rights, including the right to respect for private and family life under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights: s. 87(2) of the Act. The appellant’s case is that extradition is incompatible with his, and his family’s, article 8 rights.

The appellant is married and has two children, who are now aged 13 and 17. The eldest child was born in Kuwait, and Mr Badie has extended family in Kuwait through his wife’s family. He previously lived with his wife and children in Iraq, and now lives with them in the United Kingdom. He was apart from his family between March 2019 and August 2019, partly as a result of medical treatment abroad, partly to visit family, and partly because he came to the United Kingdom a month before his family.

The Judge identified, as factors in favour of extradition, the strong public interest in the United Kingdom honouring its international extradition obligations and discouraging the perception that it is willing to accept fugitives, the need to accord proper confidence and respect to the decisions of the issuing judicial authority, the independence of prosecutorial decisions, the seriousness of the offences, the substantial term of imprisonment that is to be served, and Mr Badie’s status as a fugitive. He identified as factors against extradition the fact that Mr Badie is married and has two children. As to the latter, the Judge recognised that the interests of the children are a primary consideration, but observed that this is not a “sole carer case” and that Mr Badie had previously been separated from his children. After balancing the various factors that he had identified, the Judge concluded that the extradition of Mr Badie is compatible with the article 8 rights of Mr Badie and his wife and their children.

That conclusion was plainly correct. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasised the strong public interest in honouring extradition obligations, such that, in reality, extradition is only likely to be incompatible with the right to respect for private and family life if extradition would have an exceptionally severe impact: Norris v Government of the United States of America(No 2) [2010] UKSC 9 [2010] 2 AC 487 per Lord Phillips at [56]; HH v Deputy Prosecutor of the Italian Republic, Genoa [2012] UKSC 25 [2013] 1 AC 338 per Lady Hale at [8(8)]; Andrysiewicz v Circuit Court in Lodz, Poland [2025] UKSC 2 [2025] 1 WLR 2733 per Lord Lloyd-Jones and Lord Stephens at [43].

Mr Keith, who argued this ground of appeal on behalf of Mr Badie, makes two submissions. First, he says that the Judge “quadruple counted” factors in favour of extradition. Second, the Judge left Mr Badie’s mental health out of account. These arguments, even if they were otherwise well-founded, do not take account of the nature of the statutory appeal. It is not sufficient to show that a judge may have given too much weight to a particular factor, or may have left a particular factor out of account. It must be demonstrated that extradition is incompatible with the right to respect for private and family life with the result that the Judge should have discharged Mr Badie: s. 104(3). Here, having regard to the public interest in favour of extradition, there are no features, or constellation of features, that come close to rendering extradition a disproportionate interference with private and family rights.

In any event, we do not accept the criticism of the Judge. He did not quadruple (or triple, or double) count factors in favour of extradition. He identified aspects of the public interest that are interrelated but which are conceptually different and are each important. Thus, there is, in every case, a strong public interest in honouring an international obligation resulting from an extradition treaty. There is also, additionally, a strong public interest in preventing the United Kingdom from being seen as a safe haven for those who flee from justice. It is also important to respect the independence of prosecutorial decisions and to accord confidence and respect to the issuing judicial authority. The Judge was right to identify these different strands of the public interest, all of which are factors in favour of granting the extradition request. There is nothing in the judgment to suggest that he gave excessive weight to any individual factor, or that he artificially inflated the weight to be accorded to the public interest in favour of extradition by taking the same factor into account more than once.

The Judge’s balancing exercise was not invalidated because he did not explicitly identify Mr Badie’s mental health as a factor against extradition. The appellant, on the Judge’s findings, is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Where extradition will have a profound impact on an individual’s physical or mental health then that is relevant to the assessment of whether extradition is compatible with the rights protected by article 8. Here, however, there is no evidence that extradition will have a significant adverse effect on Mr Badie’s mental health. The Judge rejected Mr Badie’s account of torture and of that being the cause of his post traumatic stress disorder. The appellant is not, therefore, being returned to a location where his mental health was previously damaged. There is positive evidence that there are arrangements in place to ensure that Mr Badie is provided with appropriate medical care. There is thus no evidence that extradition will have a significant impact on his mental health.

Moreover, we do not accept that the Judge left out of account Mr Badie’s mental health when he conducted the balancing exercise. He explicitly identified that Mr Badie suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and a depressive disorder in a summary of his factual findings that is contained within the section of his judgment that deals with article 8.

The Judge was considering article 8 in the context of two extradition requests. The appellant has now been discharged in respect of the second extradition request. That does not impact on the factors that weigh against extradition. Nor does it materially impact on the public interest factors in favour of extradition that were identified by the Judge and which remain valid. The only difference is that there is one offence, not two, and the potential length of imprisonment is 5 years not 10 years. That is not capable of changing the outcome of the balancing exercise.

We therefore dismiss this ground of appeal.