FIFA Indictments

The U.S. Justice Department indicted 14 soccer officials on charges of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering this week. An overview of the story on NPR’s All Things Considered can be found here. 3 min 36 sec, transcript available. More about one of the officials indicted, an American citizen, can be found here. 4 min 28 sec, transcript available.

Extradition in the U.K.

Queen Mary University of London School of Law held a conference the 23 November 2011 on "The Future for UK Extradition".

Topics for discussion included:

• The US-UK Extradition Treaty
• The operation of the European Arrest Warrant system
• The power of the Secretary of State in extradition cases
• The requirement to provide prima facie evidence
• Forum as a bar to extradition

The recording of the complete event is here. 1 hour, no transcript.
Individual panellists' remarks can be downloaded separately as .mp3 files.

Julian Assange

Charon, QC (aka Mike Semple-Piggot) and Carl Gardner discuss the various legal questions involved in the Julian Assange case. The link to the blog entry is here and a direct link to the podcast is here.
48 min, no transcript, but lots of links to documents and commentary on the blog page.

Julian Assange's extradition appeal

The Guardian has a series of articles about Julian Assange, the founder of the internet site WikiLeaks. This week the question of his extradition to Sweden to face charges of rape was before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. The justices will decide whether the Swedish prosecutor who issued the warrant is a "valid judicial authority" required by the European arrest warrant. The Guardian includes links to two short videos of the arguments which were broadcast live. The video from day one is here (4min 36 sec) and day two is here (3min 44 sec). No transcripts. In the videos you can see that the two QCs are women and that there are no wigs or gowns in sight. The court's decision is not expected before several weeks.
The Guardian is also launching an interactive history of the supreme court.