What's the cost of our 'special relationship'?

IMAGINE this. You're accused of a fraud you say you didn't commit. No-one wants to prosecute you here but the Americans decide they want you to face justice. You're extradited to the United States and put in handcuffs and leg chains on arrival.

Eventually you are released on bail but you are electronically tagged and your movements are limited and constantly monitored. Unable to work, your funds dwindle as your trial date is postponed again and again. After 18 months, you are about to have your day in court, when the hearing is put back again. It's that nightmare scenario that led Scot Gary Mulgrew to stand up in court last night and say the word he had always promised never to utter. Guilty.

The Glasgow-born banker and his two co-accused were originally charged with recommending their employer Natwest sold shares in an Enron-related company at a knockdown price and then making a fraudulent profit on the side in a conspiracy with Enron's chief financial officer. They faced up to nine years in jail. Last night the Natwest Three went to court and accepted a plea bargain on a reduced charge of mismanaging a conflict of interest in exchange for 37 months behind bars. They are likely to be flown home to serve most of their sentences here.

I first met Mulgrew on a sweltering hot July day in Texas last year. Having read American prosecution background documents, I expected a swaggering pin-striped whiz-kid who'd spotted a way to make a quick buck out of a huge, faltering American corporation. But Gary Mulgrew isn't your average city banker.

Casually dressed and quietly spoken, he talked to me about Scottish football and missing home in an ordinary Glaswegian accent. Back then he was upbeat and determined to establish his innocence but, as the months have passed, he's been beaten down by the American justice system.

Attempts to mount a proper defence have been frustrated at every turn.

Former colleagues have been reluctant to offer themselves as defence witnesses, terrified that they will fly to Houston, get caught up in the web and never come back.

On top of that, supporters of the men say our own Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns Natwest, has been at best unco-operative, shielding past and present staff from giving evidence. If that had been clear at the time, extradition may never have been allowed to go ahead.

Having sold everything to fund the stymied defence and facing an American system that requires all 12 jurors to acquit or face a retrial in another year, the men just ran out of steam.

The last time I spoke to Gary Mulgrew he told me: "I just want to get home." Through friends and family, he admits he made mistakes but not on the scale alleged. The essence of this case, however, is not about right or wrong, guilt or not guilty. It is instead about America's ability to reach out and seize British citizens on scant evidence.

The case came in the aftermath of 9/11, when America was determined to prove its muscle by delving wherever in the world it wanted to reach and criminalising conduct that has no jurisdiction within its borders. As a Home Office Minister Caroline Flint MP said: "People who are accused of a crime should be judged by that crime in the country where the offence is committed."

If a crime was committed by the Natwest Three, it was done here. Yet, in justice, as in so many other things, Britain gave in to what America wanted. Where does it end?

If you burn the American flag outside the US embassy in London as a protest, will you be charged and extradited to the US to face a jail term for an act that is not a crime in the UK? The case sets a dangerous precedent which has quite rightly dismayed and alarmed British business as extradition legislation framed to deal with terrorism is now being used to pursue white-collar crime.

Among those publicly supporting the men are the Shadow Home Secretary, the chairman of British Airways, the retail tycoon Philip Green and the head of the Stock Exchange. They understand what is at risk here. If you have a business connection to the United States, all it takes is the American authorities to take a dim view of your actions for you to end up across the pond stranded in the same legal limbo as the Natwest Three. They are the first but they won't be the last.

International bankers rarely get or deserve sympathy, but forget the big salaries and expense accounts which are now long gone. These are men who have been separated from their loved ones for 18 months. Gary Mulgrew is now broke and his family life has fallen apart. On top of that, he's about to spend three years in jail for a victimless crime that he may or may not have committed.

We will never know the truth because the system has worn the men down to the point where they can go no further and will accept a grubby deal just to get away. So much for a Special Relationship. So much for American justice.

Welcome aboard the gravy train

SO we have a new slogan for our happy land. Goodbye "Best Small Country in the World". Hello "Welcome to Scotland". According to the SNP, it encapsulates "what a modern, vibrant and successful country Scotland is". Does it really?

How about "Scotland - an endless gravy train for image advisors and consultants". That's more like it.

Freedom can leave you speechless

IT'S been an interesting week for freedom of speech. In Britain we go to extraordinary lengths to allow a right wing extremist and an apologist for the Nazis to air their views. Meanwhile in Sudan, a British teacher faces 40 lashes for listening to the Muslim children in her class who wanted to name a teddy bear after the prophet Mohammed.

The views of Nick Griffin and David Irving are utterly repugnant to the vast majority of British people and the world would clearly be a better place if they simply didn't exist. But since they do, events in the Sudan are a reminder of how important it is that we let them have their say - and judge them on it.

Tolerance and freedom of speech are the cornerstones of our democracy and part of what marks us out from the religious madness facing Gillian Gibbons in Khartoum. At the end of the day, where would you rather live?