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Horrified gran finds she’s on the ‘wanted’ list in France
Georgina Littlejohn27.07.09
A London grandmother has become a wanted woman in France for a conviction she did not know she had.
French authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Deborah Dark for a drugs offence she was acquitted of 20 years ago.
The 45-year-old from Richmond, south-west London, was arrested in France in 1989 after police found several kilos of cannabis in her car.
She blamed her boyfriend at the time and was cleared by a French court, but the prosecution appealed without telling her and the following year she was found guilty and sentenced to six years in prison.
She managed to travel back and forth to France several times over the following two decades, unaware she was a convicted criminal. In 2005, a European Arrest Warrant was issued by the French authorities for Ms Dark to be returned to serve her jail term, but neither she nor her lawyer were made aware of this.
She said she first knew she was a wanted woman when she travelled to Turkey in 2007 and was arrested at gunpoint at the airport.
But the authorities couldn't give her a reason, and British police were unable to find any warrants against her. Then last year, she was arrested in Spain while with her daughter and held in custody for a month until a court refused to extradite her.
When she returned to the UK she was arrested by British police at Gatwick airport and bailed but her extradition was also rejected.
Ms Dark said: “It's destroyed me. If I leave the country I will be arrested because I'm still on the European Arrest Warrant.”
