We're adapting Andrew Sullivan's quote of the day, from Edmund Burke, for a different purpose: as an apt comment on the plight of the NatWest 3, likely facing extradition to Bush country from charges in the Enron collapse -- even though the actual alleged crime was against NatWest, was committed in England, and the extradition is being done under anti-terrorism legislation:
A person is brought hither in the dungeon of a ship's hold; thence he is vomited into a dungeon on land, loaded with irons, unfurnished with money, unsupported by friends, three thousand miles from all means of calling upon or confronting evidence, where no one local circumstance that tends to detect perjury can possibly be judged of;—such a person may be executed according to form, but he can never be tried according to justice.
UPDATE: More from the WSJ Law Blog. And here's a previous post of ours on the three; we also reiterate the disclosure that we're related to one of them.
UPDATE 5 JULY: The Daily Telegraph is at the centre of the campaign to stop the extradition. An editorial and an open letter, accepting signatures.
FINAL UPDATE 9 FEBRUARY 2008: The essay from which the Burke quote is drawn surfaces in a John McCain speech.
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