Two High Court judges in London refused a last minute request by one of the Arabs to delay the extradition in order to take a brain scan that his lawyers contended would show he was unfit for extradition. The judges said simply: “The sooner he is put on trial the better.”
The judges also said, “It is unacceptable that extradition proceedings should take more than a relatively short time, to be measured in months not years.”
But the extradition case involving Nosratollah Tajik, a retired Iranian diplomat, has been pending now for six years, since October 2006. His lost his last appeal in 2008. The only thing delaying his extradition now is the failure of three successive home secretaries (interior ministers)—from both the Conservative and Labor Parties—to sign the papers required to put him on a plane to the United States.
A few months ago, Britain extradited two Britons to the United States, including an upper class businessman who had a lot of political support.
But Tajik, 59 years old, remains in England and is living in his home untouched.
A US diplomatic report written a few years ago and released recently by WikiLeaks said US diplomats had been told that Britain’s Foreign Office was concerned that its embassy in Tehran might be attacked if Tajik were extradited to the United States.
The embassy was attacked over another issue almost a year ago and Britain then withdrew all its diplomats and closed the embassy. So that explanation for declining to extradite Tajik no longer holds.
A separate WikiLeaks cable, however, reported a different explanation being given to another US diplomat. That report said the British did not want to extradite Tajik for fear it might interfere with the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, which Britain entered into in 2003 and which have gone nowhere in nine years.
After being arrested in 2006, Tajik spent just a week in jail before being sent home under house arrest.. He must remain the house from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day and he must check in at the local police headquarters once a day to prove he has not fled.
Tajik was Iran’s cultural counselor in Britain from 1991 to 1993 and ambassador to Jordan from 1999 to 2003. He then retired and entered Durham University in Northern England, where he taught Farsi and studied for his doctorate.
He said an Iranian he met while visiting his family in Tehran in 2006 asked him to help obtain Dutch-made night vision binoculars for some research he was doing. The man told him the arrangements were being made through an American firm and asked Tajik to contact that firm.
That firm turned out to be a front company for US Customs. Customs agents eventually traveled to Britain and negotiated the sale with Tajik, then asked the British to arrest him.
Tajik says he was entrapped in violation of British law. The British courts did not agree. Tajik also says he didn’t know there was any violation of US law and was just trying to help the researcher in Tehran.
According to published reports, Iran has regularly requested that the case be dropped. Officials are said to bring up the issue whenever there are official talks. Once, Tehran proposed that Tajik be exchanged for five British yachtsmen, who had been arrested when they strayed into Iranian territorial waters.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is said to have become angry and frustrated at Tajik’s extradition being delayed.
Whatever the case, more than four years on, a decision on whether the extradition should go ahead is still to be reached.
According to a February 2010 report from the Washington-based nuclear non-proliferation group, the Institute for Science and International Security, written by a team including David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq, Tajik suggested that the undercover US agents he met should deliver the illegal equipment to Durham for shipment on to Iran.
The report said that, asked whether he had transshipped US items before, Tajik replied: “Yes, yes, yes. Night vision plus the other equipment…. I did it last month and it was no problem.”
The report said that during one meeting, Tajik appeared to know how to operate the military equipment he was shown and asked about buying a naval gun system.
Previously, Tajik had been implicated in terrorism. In testimony given to the US House of Representatives in February 2005, Matthew A Levitt, director of terrorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Tajik, while Iranian ambassador to Jordan, was involved in recruiting Palestinians wounded in Israel to become Hezbollah fighters.
Levitt said Iran arranged for travel, medical treatment and terrorist training for the recruits before returning them to the Palestinian territories to establish terrorist cells.
If Tajik is extradited and convicted, he could face 10 years in a US prison as well as large fines.