Kellie Tranter is to be thanked for her many text links within the article that further disclose the reach and implications of the various tentacles of what has become the extradition monster. It is doubly satisfying that she has used the case of the relatively unknown Hew Griffiths who became the first person in the world to be extradited to, and criminally prosecuted in, the US for copyright infringement.

It was particularly illuminating to see, in the Tuesday 26 June 2007 blog post by journalist Peter Martin that is the destination of her coloured text link 'criticised' contained in the sixth paragraph of the article, this statement by Martin:

"As far as I can tell, Australia’s politicians
said not a thing. I receive every press release
issued by Australia’s Shadow Ministers, hundreds
each week, and I can’t find a single mention of
Hew Griffiths among them."

Bearing in mind that the Hew Griffiths extradition took place entirely under a Howard government, and that an Opposition's duty is to oppose, it is extremely revelatory that not a single mention was made of the Hew Griffiths case by any then SHADOW Minister. It sort of reveals why, when subsequently in government, that same 'talent pool' has abandoned Assange.

There is an aspect of the Hew Griffiths case that seems not to have been expressly mentioned in the article, nor in Martin's blog post. It is that Hew Griffiths came to Australia as the child of a 'Ten Pound Pom', much as did the now Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. That made Griffiths a permanently resident British subject, but in the absence of having taken out Australian citizenship, not an Australian citizen. So it was doubtless represented to the then government that it was able to easily wash its hands of him, and the then miserable excuse for an opposition was evidently only too happy to have gone along with it.

'Interesting' to see how this now perverted process routinely denies what would otherwise be likely entitlements of accused persons to bail while appealing extradition for essentially civil offenses.

Kellie Tranter draws attention to the fact that "British-based members of Drink or Die were tried in Britain, just as Griffiths could have been charged, and tried, in an Australian court". That must have been a bitter irony for Hew Griffiths, a permanently-resident-in-Australia British subject. She also draws attention to the fact that not a single Shadow Minister of the then Labor Opposition so much as mentioned the Hew Griffiths extradition.

That British accused fared better than an Australian accused, at least to the extent of being tried in their own country, is a commentary upon the worth of the respective citizenships involved. It is a ranking achieved not through mere neglect or lack of concern for an Australian permanent resident facing the prospect of extradition to the US, but one I suggest arising out of deliberate intent.

In June 2009, Daryl Melham MP, Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, submitted supplementary remarks to the JSCEM's 'Report on the conduct of the 2007 Federal election (sic)'. Daryl Melham proposed the repeal of 'grandfathering' legislation preserving the rights of British subjects permanently resident in Australia, that were enrolled electorally as at 25 January 1984, to remain on the rolls. Hew Griffiths may well have been one of those initially conditionally, or under Melham's proposal, prospectively unconditionally, intended to be disfranchised.

In that part of his supplementary remarks (titled 'Should British subjects who are not Australian citizens continue to exercise the franchise?') headed 'Background', Daryl Melham may have misled the Parliament.

Melham makes the claim on page 339 of the Report that "... the Menzies Liberal Government passed the Nationality and Citizenship Act (Citizenship Act) in 1948.". It did not! The Menzies government was not elected until 10 December 1949. It was an Act brought in by the ALP Chifley government.

The conduct of the present Labor government with respect to Assange shows the true value of the Australian citizenship
into which it proposes bullying permanently resident British subjects into accepting.

As Peter Martin said:

"It happened to Hew. It could happen to YOU!"

Forrest Gump had bells ringing for me with the Hew Griffiths case.
What a craven piece of work from the government of the day (and it seems the opposition).
Following on from the related Hicks and Habib examples earlier, the ultimate denouement as to these gutless "laws" came in a different form eventually, with Dr Haneef.
Dr Haneef's case was the straw that broke the back as to the camel of public opinion, Howard was shot out for this as well other reasons.
Yet Labor has persevered with the worst of the garbage, as the failure to support Assange and then Roxon's computer surveillance legislation demonstrate.

Given that the blocking of the extradition to the US of one British citizen, Gary McKinnon, has been mentioned in the article, and that the legal doctrine underpinning extradition of 'double criminality' has been raised in the comments, it may be instructive to consider the case of another British citizen that has fallen victim to US-pursued extradition, Brian Howes.

Howes was finally extradited to the US on 19 July 2012, after around five years deprivation of liberty without charge or hearing in the UK whilst he fought that extradition through such appeals process as was available. (Hew Griffiths and Gary McKinnon likewise have had to endure extensive pre-trial deprivation of liberty whilst exercising their rights to oppose their respective extraditions.)

The thing was that in Howes' case what he was accused of, and sought for, was the exporting, from the UK where he was based, of chemicals subject to regulatory control within the US because of their capability of being used as pre-cursor chemicals in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamines. The problem, for any entity wanting the extradition process in general to remain respectable within the field of international law, was that trade in those chemicals in the UK was completely legal. Howes' extradition is one having all the appearance of having been sought, and effected, in total disregard as to the principle of 'double criminality', that is, of what he had done in supplying those chemicals being a crime in BOTH the US (where Howes did not set foot) and the UK (where Howes quite openly conducted his business).

Such problem as the offshore availability of methamphetamine pre-cursor chemicals may have posed for the US administration was one to have been solved by government-to-government negotiation.

A trial date was set for 5 September 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona. A search of the USDOJ Bureau of Prisons inmate locator yields no result for Brian Howes: http://twitpic.com/b4t89y . What has happened to him?

Has he become, like so many Argentinians of yesteryear, 'un desaparacido' of what increasingly is looking to be like a Big Banana republic?