extradition

The United Kingdom government is moving to reinstate extradition cooperation with Hong Kong that was suspended five years ago due to concerns about the city’s Chinese national security laws.

The Home Office applied to Parliament to make the changes on July 17, followed by a letter to Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp the next day.

“It is in our national interest to have effective extradition relationships to prevent criminals from evading justice and the UK becoming a haven for criminals,” the July 18 letter from Security Minister Dan Jarvis said.

The Home Office also plans to restore an extradition framework with Chile and Zimbabwe, according to the letter, which was shared on X by Conservative MP Alicia Kearns.

Cases for Hong Kong and Zimbabwe would both be considered on a “case-by-case basis,” Jarvis said.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, is a particular sticking point for the UK due to their historical relationship and the sharp decline in political freedoms in Hong Kong since China imposed controversial national security legislation in 2020.

In 2024, legislators in Hong Kong approved a new national security law ­- referred to as Article 23 – that gave the government new powers to crack down on all forms of dissent on the grounds of alleged treason, espionage, sedition and external interference in Hong Kong’s internal affairs.

At the time, Hong Kong’s government said Article 23 was needed to prevent a recurrence of the protests of 2019, and that its provisions would only affect “an extremely small minority” of disloyal residents.

The UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and the United States all suspended their extradition agreements in 2020 with the Chinese city due to concerns about how the laws would be used.

“In my view, reinstating extradition with Hong Kong is morally indefensible. The Chinese Communist Party has turned Hong Kong into a surveillance state where freedom of expression, rule of law, and basic civil liberties are systematically dismantled,” Kearns wrote on X.

“This move risks legitimizing a regime that imprisons critics, silences democracy activists, and uses extradition as a tool of persecution,” she said.

Here is the letter from the Home Office.

In my view, reinstating extradition with Hong Kong is morally indefensible.

The Chinese Communist Party has turned Hong Kong into a surveillance state where freedom of expression, rule of law, and basic civil liberties are… pic.twitter.com/6gb923QXKb

— Alicia Kearns MP (@aliciakearns) July 24, 2025

Ronny Tong, a Hong Kong barrister and member of the city’s executive council, told Al Jazeera that concerns about a potential extradition deal were overblown.

“Extradition is in relation to non-political criminal cases, so any fear that it’d be used to transfer persons with political crimes, eg, national security cases, is totally unfounded and only shows ignorance of the procedure,” he said. “Furthermore, it is up to judges of the transferring state to ensure the procedure will not be abused.”

He said the city was “more than ready to restart the arrangement, as we have full confidence our judges are totally independent and of highest integrity”.

Hong Kong’s 2020 national security law criminalised secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference, and was supplemented in 2024 to include treason, sedition, theft of state secrets, espionage, sabotage, and external interference.

Hong Kong’s government has said the laws are necessary to protect the city from political sabotage and foreign influence, following months of pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.

Security Minister Chris Tang said in June that 326 people have been arrested under Hong Kong’s national security laws since 2020.

The government has also used international bounties to expand its reach to Hong Kong activists abroad, or cancelled their passports while they were overseas.

The moves have been seen as largely symbolic, but also chilling for a city that was once considered the freest place in Asia.

On Friday, Hong Kong issued a new list of bounties for 19 activists involved with a pro-Hong Kong democracy NGO in Canada.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 as a “special administrative region” and was promised special rights and freedoms until 2047, under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

Notorious gang leader has agreed to be extradited to the United States to face cocaine and weapons smuggling charges.

Ecuador’s most infamous drug lord has agreed to be extradited to the United States to face cocaine and weapons smuggling charges, a court in the capital Quito has said.

The announcement on Friday is the latest chapter in the dramatic underworld tale of Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, who was recaptured in June after escaping from a maximum security prison 18 months ago in a jailbreak that triggered a bloody wave of gang violence.

Macias, head of the “Los Choneros” gang, is wanted in the US on charges of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, including weapons smuggling.

After Macias vanished from his prison cell in the southwestern port of Guayaquil in January 2024, authorities had been scouring the world for him, offering a $1m reward for information leading to his capture. But it emerged that the country’s most wanted man was hiding out at a family member’s mansion in his hometown.

Ecuadorian security forces recaptured the drug kingpin last month at an underground bunker beneath a marble-walled house in the port city of Manta, some 260km (160 miles) southwest of the capital, Quito.

The former taxi-driver-turned-crime-boss had been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for involvement in organised crime, drug trafficking and murder.

In a country plagued by drug-related crime, Los Choneros members responded with violence as the manhunt began after their leader’s escape – using car bombs, holding prison guards hostage and storming a television station during a live broadcast.

President Daniel Noboa’s right-wing government had recently declared, “We will gladly send him and let him answer to the North American law.”

Macias, dressed in an orange prison uniform, took part in a court hearing Friday via videolink from a high-security prison in Guayaquil.

In response to a judge’s question, he replied, “Yes, I accept (extradition).”

This would make Macias the first Ecuadorian extradited by his country since the measure was written into law last year, after a referendum in which Noboa sought the approval of measures to boost his war on criminal gangs.

Ecuador, once a peaceful haven wedged between the world’s two top cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt in recent years as rival gangs with ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

These gang wars have largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where Macias wielded immense control. He was the unofficial boss of his Guayaquil prison, where authorities found images glorifying him, weapons and US dollars.

Videos of parties he held in the prison captured fireworks and a mariachi band. In one sequence, he appeared waving, laughing and petting a fighting rooster.

Macias earned a law degree behind bars. By the time he escaped, he was considered a suspect in the assassination of presidential candidate and anticorruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio in 2023.

Soon after Macias’s prison break, Noboa declared Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict” and ordered the military and tanks into the streets to “neutralize” the gangs.

Los Choneros has ties to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Colombia’s Gulf Clan – the world’s largest cocaine exporter – and Balkan mafias, according to the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.

More than 70 percent of all cocaine produced in the world now passes through Ecuador’s ports, according to government data. In 2024, the country seized a record 294 tonnes of drugs, mainly cocaine.