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Extradition is the formal process by which one state asks another to surrender a person for prosecution or to serve a sentence, and extradition defence is the work of stopping that surrender. IHR Advisors, founded by lawyers Ben Keith and Rhys Davies, defends these cases across jurisdictions, often where the request behind them is political rather than genuine. The first hours matter. What is done at the start of an extradition case quietly sets the limits of everything that follows.
A request is usually backed by an arrest warrant, and in many countries the first step is provisional arrest, detention before the full papers have even arrived, on the strength of the request alone. From there a person can be held pending a hearing, granted bail on strict terms, or surrendered to a state they fled. None of it waits for the underlying allegation to be tested.
The reach is wider than the courtroom. An extradition request, and the INTERPOL Red Notice that often precedes it, follows a person across borders: arrest in a country they were only passing through, accounts frozen, travel cut off, a life put on hold for as long as the proceedings run. The request alone is enough to produce all of it, whether or not the charge has any substance.
Extradition is resisted on defined grounds, and a strong defence is built by fixing the facts of the case onto the bars that the law recognises. The main ones run across most systems: that surrender would expose the person to a real risk of torture or ill-treatment, that they would not receive a fair trial, that the conduct alleged is not a crime in the country being asked to surrender them, and that the request is an abuse of process, brought for a hidden purpose rather than genuine justice.
Political motivation sits at the centre of much of this work. A request issued to punish or pressure someone for who they are or what they have said, rather than for any real crime, is one a court can refuse, but the refusal has to be proved. That means laying out the history of the prosecution, the conduct and motive of the requesting state, the pattern of similar cases brought against other targets, and the absence of genuine evidence behind the charge. The argument is won on the record, not on the grievance.
Extradition frequently comes after an INTERPOL Red Notice circulated to police forces worldwide, and sometimes parallel proceedings in more than one country at once. An INTERPOL Red Notice is a request from one member country asking the others to find a named person and hold them for extradition, and a Diffusion does the same job through a more direct, less scrutinised channel. Fighting the extradition without addressing the notice behind it leaves the person exposed at the next border.
The work is therefore run on several fronts together: defending the surrender in the national court, challenging the notice inside INTERPOL’s own rules, and coordinating across every jurisdiction where the person is at risk. A step taken in one forum can help or harm the others, so the strands are managed as one case rather than several.
Extradition is a distinct field, and a strong general criminal practitioner is not automatically equipped for it. It turns on treaty arrangements, the bars to surrender, the standards a court applies to assurances from a requesting state, and the way a case in one country interacts with a Red Notice or a request in another. These are not things picked up on the way past.
They also run under pressure of time, with a person’s liberty live from the first day. Knowing which argument to make first, when to seek bail, when to challenge the notice and when to hold, is the part that experience decides. It is also where the outcome is usually settled.
Ben Keith has spent years defending people in extradition and cross-border cases where the charge underneath comes from a state with little regard for the rule of law, taking those cases through the national courts, INTERPOL’s own oversight body and United Nations bodies, and acting in the asylum proceedings that often run alongside. He is a lawyer at 5SAH in London, ranked for extradition in both Chambers and Partners and the Legal 500, the former describing him as “out of this world”.
In 2021 he co-wrote Undue Influence: The UAE and INTERPOL with Rhys Davies and Sir David Calvert-Smith, setting out how political interference reached an international institution’s own leadership, and the report fed directly into the case for reform. He has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes, written for the Financial Times, given evidence to the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, and co-founded Red Notice Monitor, where he edits and publishes legal analysis of INTERPOL cases and policy.
Rhys Davies has built the same kind of practice from a different chair: cases involving torture, extradition and politically motivated requests across several jurisdictions, and communications to the United Nations where a case calls for them. He is a lawyer at Temple Garden Chambers in London and The Hague, ranked as a leading individual by the Legal 500 2026, which calls him “a standout international lawyer” and the lawyer others turn to for UN submissions in difficult cases.
He has written on extradition and international law for The Economist, Newsweek, City A.M., the Guardian, The Times and the Independent, appears regularly on Al Jazeera, and has featured on CBS 60 Minutes and the Sky News Dirty Work podcast. He co-founded and edits Red Notice Monitor, and in 2025 he gave evidence, alongside Ben Keith, to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Ben Keith and Rhys Davies founded IHR Advisors to keep the legal work, the strategy and the press handling of these cases in one place, because in practice they cannot be pulled apart. An extradition fight is rarely won by the court argument alone, and the firm runs the whole of it: defending the surrender in the national court, challenging the INTERPOL Red Notice or Diffusion behind it, carrying the asylum and human rights proceedings that move alongside, managing publicity where it helps and holding it back where it would not, and working with local counsel in every country the case touches.
In one matter the firm acted for a high net worth individual caught up in multi-jurisdictional, high-profile litigation, where a politically motivated Red Notice was being used as a weapon by the other side. By showing that the criminal allegations behind it had been manipulated by the client’s rivals, the firm secured the removal of the notice. The people it acts for are individuals and their families, business people, politically exposed persons and human rights defenders, and the requests come most often from states with a settled habit of transnational repression, the reaching of a government beyond its own borders to pursue the people it wants to silence.
It is the work of resisting a request by one state to have a person surrendered by another for prosecution or sentence. A defence challenges the request on the grounds the law allows, including the risk of an unfair trial or ill-treatment, the passage of time, and political motivation or abuse of process.
Yes. A request brought to punish or pressure someone for their politics, beliefs or identity rather than for a genuine crime can be refused, but the motivation has to be proved on the evidence, set against the conduct of the requesting state and the pattern of its other cases.
A Red Notice asks police forces worldwide to locate and hold a person for extradition, so it often travels with or ahead of a formal request. Addressing the extradition without challenging the notice can leave a person exposed to arrest at the next border, so the two are usually handled together.
Take specialist advice immediately. Provisional arrest can happen before the full papers arrive, and the earliest decisions, on bail, on the notice and on which argument to lead, shape what remains open later in the case.
Contact IHR Advisors through the contact page on this site. Ben and Rhys take instructions from individuals, family members, organisations and legal teams working in parallel, and early advice matters most where liberty is already at stake.
If you are facing an extradition request, or have reason to think one is coming, take advice now rather than later. These cases move quickly, a person’s liberty is live from the first day, and the choices made at the outset are the hardest to undo. An extradition lawyer can usually tell you, inside a single conversation, where you stand and what can be done about it.
If you would like to speak with us about our areas of practice or anything else please contact us via the form linked below.
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