But, in Britain, its main provisions have been incorporated into the Extradition Act, which came into force in January.
ECONOMIST: A new US-UK extradition treaty bites for the first time
Hywel Francis, the Labour MP who chairs the joint committee, said human rights provisions in the Extradition Act were "clearly inadequate".
Mr McKinnon was arrested in 2002 and again in 2005 before an order for his extradition was made in July 2006 under the 2003 Extradition Act.
Lord Bingham, and one of the Law Lords in the first panel who sided with General Pinochet, considered the retrospectivity argument briefly, and then rejected it because the plain language of Britain's 1989 Extradition Act seems explicitly to rule it out.
McKinnon's lawyer, Karen Todner, complained that the United States has never provided evidence to prosecutors or McKinnon's legal team to support their extradition request -- and in fact, under Britain's Extradition Act of 2003, U.S. prosecutors are not required to.
But McNabb argues that even in spite of that potential loophole, Assange has a better shot of staying out of American hands in Sweden than he would have in the United Kingdom, where the Extradition Act practically pre-ordains his trip to America.
What the five Law Lords in the current majority have done is to interpret international law, and the British statutes implementing it, as narrowly as possible, but to interpret the Extradition Act so adventurously that even British lawyers who specialise in fighting extradition cases are amazed.
Five Law Lords have embarked on a rewriting of British extradition law, ruling that extradition can take place only if the alleged act was criminal in both Britain and Spain at the time it was committed, rather than at the time of the extradition request.
The 2003 Act effectively made it easier for the US to seek the extradition of someone from the UK because the US would no longer need to provide a "prima facie" case to British courts - proving your case on the face of available evidence.
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