A 10-year legal battle has ended with the High Court quashing the Home Office decision to extradite businessman Mohammed Lodhi
A 10-year legal battle has ended with the High Court quashing the Home Office decision to extradite businessman Mohammed Lodhi to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where there was a risk he would have been tortured or suffered inhuman or degrading treatment.
The court also held Lodhi would have been prejudiced at his trial, or punished and detained by reason of his race and nationality. Sadly, the ruling, which concludes the longest running extradition proceedings in English legal history, comes too late for Lodhi, who died in January.
Lodhi had been accused of involvement in drugs manufacturing.
His lawyers argued the allegations were fabricated as a result of business rivalries, and that torture was widespread in the UAE’s prisons.The court accepted that the evidence painted a “picture of a state which respects human rights in a very selective way”.
Lodhi’s solicitor, Corker Binning solicitor Andrew Smith, says: “To win an extradition case on human rights grounds is extremely rare. Mr Lodhi and his family fought long and