The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) had opened an investigation into the defendant, a United States citizen, travelling to Syria, the indication being that he had travelled in order to fight in the conflict there. When interviewed at an airport in Rome, the defendant told the FBI that he was travelling to help refugees, had no intention of fighting, and that he had asked his brother to contact the US Department of State to enquire whether it was legal for him to enter Syria. Those statements were untrue and, in a subsequent interview, he admitted that he had travelled to Syria with the intention of fighting and that, while his brother had intended to call the Department of State, that had been with a view to stopping him from travelling. The Government of the United State of America requested his extradition to stand trial in California on a charge of making a false statement involving international terrorism. The defendant resisted extradition on the ground, inter alia, that his alleged conduct, if committed in the United Kingdom, would not have amounted to a criminal offence and thus was not an extradition offence. The district judge, rejecting the requesting state’s contention that the conduct amounted to the offence of perverting the course of public justice under domestic law, refused to make an extradition order and discharged the defendant.
On the US Government’s appeal—
Held, appeal allowed. The common law offence of perverting the course of public justice was committed where a person carried out an act which had a tendency, and was intended, to pervert the administration of public justice. Not all conduct which misled or wasted the time of the police would amount to perverting the course of public justice. The mere fact of lying to a police officer or other investigator might not itself disclose the offence, although a lie was capable of constituting the necessary conduct if it tended, and was intended, to have the relevant effect. Lies which either diverted or obstructed investigators were capable of constituting the relevant conduct. It was not necessary to show that the defendant intended to pervert a particular investigation, it being sufficient to show an intention to pervert the course of public justice in a general sense by obstructing or diverting those involved in the investigation of criminal offences. While the offence with which the defendant had been charged in the US was not precisely the same as the English common law offence of perverting the course of public justice, its requirements were included within those of the common law offence. The defendant, knowing that he was answering questions posed by the FBI in an official capacity, had to have been aware that the interview was part of an FBI investigation, albeit that he did not know its precise scope. The lies he told had the tendency to put the FBI on the wrong track and to divert their investigation. On the evidence, the defendant had known that lying to the FBI was unlawful, as was required for the US offence, and he had intended to pervert the course of justice, as required by the English common law offence. Had the defendant been a British citizen who lied to a British police officer making investigations which could have led to proceedings at home, he would have been liable to prosecution for perverting the course of public justice, notwithstanding that the police officer was conducting inquiries in another jurisdiction, because the lies told in the foreign jurisdiction perverted the course of justice in the domestic jurisdiction. The elements of the common law offence, and the US offence, had been made out. Accordingly, the district judge’s order would be quashed and the matter remitted for reconsideration (paras 14, 17, 28, 30–36).
David Perry QC and Richard Evans (instructed by Crown Prosecution Service) for the Government of the United States of America.
Simon Farrell QC and Ben Cooper (instructed by JFH Law llp) for the defendant.