No extradition treaty so, with one bound, Jack [Warner] is free at last
KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: Jack Warner, the former FIFA vice president, has finally succeeded in his decade-long court battle to avoid extradition to the United States to face FIFAGate corruption charges – and on the apparently most simplest of grounds.
Trinidad and Tobago’s high court permanently stayed extradition proceedings against Warner, 82, who had been among more than 50 individuals and corporations targeted by the US Justice Department back in May 2015. He had been fighting ever extradition since.
In the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago. Justice Karen Reid held that the extradition request from the United States was flawed because valid extradition agreement had ever been in place between the two nations.
Among the allegations, Warner had been accused of accepting US$5m in bribes in relation to Russia’s successful bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
The legal battle has seen several twists. In November 2022 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London — then Trinidad & Tobago’s final appellate court — dismissed Warner’s appeal against extradition, seemingly paving the way for his transfer to face trial.
Warner’s lawyers then countered that the necessary “speciality rule” — a legal safeguard meant to ensure that an individual extradited is only tried for the offences specified in the extradition request — had not been properly secured under local law..
Earlier this month, the US’s lead attorney did not contest Warner’s claim that no binding and valid treaty or arrangement existed to satisfy all the legal requirements for extradition. On September 23, Justice Reid ruled that under those conditions, the extradition instructions, notably a certificate purportedly issued by a former Attorney General in 2015 that asserted such an agreement, were invalid.
Warner welcomed the decision while noting that the ruling had come “10 years too late.”
The United States Department of Justice, which has maintained the corruption charges, has not yet indicated whether it will seek to appeal or pursue alternative legal pathways.
Jack Warner once held high office not only within FIFA but also in Trinidad & Tobago politics — as a government minister, MP, and national figure in football — and is under a lifetime FIFA ban from football.
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