Hamilton cocaine smuggling couple successfully appeal extradition

Mar 11 2010

A HAMILTON couple facing extradition to Portugal for cocaine trafficking have successfully appealed against their extradition.

European arrest warrant requests from the Portuguese authorities for John Kane and Nicola Feeney had been upheld at Edinburgh Sheriff Court in December.

The couple, however, appealed Sheriff Kenneth McIver’s decision, and at the High Court in Edinburgh last week Law Lords upheld the appeal, ruling the warrants to be “defective” and therefore unenforceable.

Feeney and Kane had been handed a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence in Portugal for smuggling five-and-a-half kilos of cocaine from Brazil.

They were told no appeal would be lodged by the Portuguese prosecutor and were given their passports back.

But once the pair returned to the UK, the Portuguese authorities successfully appealed the decision to release them and the suspended sentence was revoked in their absence.

The European arrest warrants to bring them back to Portugal had lacked specific reference to the Portuguese court, where a successful appeal had been granted and their suspensions had been revoked.

Following their successful High Court appeal, the pair’s lawyer Nigel Scullion, of Nicholas J Scullion and Co, said: “The extradition warrant was defective and my clients are staying here. Thanks to my team, it has now been proven that they were robbed of their liberty for approximately three months.

“We will be exploring what remedies are available to them for this and shall fight for them until justice is done.”

Kane and Feeney had been caught with the cocaine at Lisbon Airport in November 2007.

They had flown in from Sao Paulo with packages of the class-A drug in two suitcases.

The couple, of Almada Tower, have been living and working in Hamilton since their return from Portugal.

They learned of the European arrest warrant when police arrived at their door on October 13 last year.

l A man who said his name was ‘Jack’ called the Advertiser on Tuesday claiming to speak for John Kane. He said Kane was prepared to speak to us but only if we were willing to pay for an interview. We declined the offer.