Extradition protestors frustrated as Simmons appeal is dismissed

Another blow was dealt to those campaigning against the extradition regime between the US and UK last week after Simmons & Simmons failed in its attempts to have an extradition case thrown out for abuse of process.

Simmons litigation head Colin Passmore is acting for retired hoteliers Stanley and Beatrice Tollman, who are wanted in the US on fraud charges.

Their case has been through several preliminary hearings, including an Administrative Court hearing in September this year when the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers ordered a fast-track extradition hearing within 60 days.

Passmore, instructing Three Raymond Buildings' Clive Nichols QC and James Lewis QC for Stanley and Beatrice Tollman respectively, filed a witness statement alleging abuse of process against the couple.

The defendants alleged that the extradition proceedings were being made in bad faith by the US prosecutor Stanley Okula; that Okula had deliberately delayed proceedings so that the extradition was governed by the 2003 extradition treaty, which has not yet been ratified by the US; and that Okula was deliberately misleading the court.

On Monday 4 December senior district judge Timothy Workman, sitting in the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, found that, while Okula had been found responsible for abuse of process in a Canadian court against Stanley Tollman's son Brett and nephew Gavin, that did not mean that the same was true in the UK. Workman therefore dismissed the claim.

Alun Jones QC of Great James Street Chambers represented the US government.