'This could be the last time I see my children'

The fact that he can trace his family back to the Domesday Book does not appear to count for much when it comes to the wheels of American justice. Giles Carlyle-Clarke, a British aristocrat who can do just that, is facing deportation within days to the United States for drugs offences alleged to have taken place two decades ago.

Carlyle-Clarke, 47, a furniture importer and former racing yachtsman, will present a 2,000-name petition to the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, this week, to protest against his deportation to Alabama. If convicted he could face 25 years in a prison system described by Amnesty International as one of the harshest in the country. Twice divorced, Carlyle-Clarke will leave behind two young children: eight-year-old Max, for whom he is the sole carer, and Jessica, 12, who lives with her mother in Italy but spends her holidays in England.

Carlyle-Clarke, whose family has owned the ancient Winterborne Clenston estate in Dorset since 1066, told The Observer: ‘I am sole parent to an eight-year-old child I have brought up from birth. My over-riding concern is the welfare of Max. There has never been another figure in his life. He has no one else and would be effectively orphaned by my extradition.’

Psychological reports on Max and his sister say there would be significant damage to their intellectual and emotional development if their father were deported. Jessica last saw her father 10 days ago when she flew back to her home in Genoa after spending Christmas and New Year in Dorset.

‘It was devastating. Although I don’t dwell on it, she is aware of what’s happening. That may be the last time I see her for a very long time,’ said Carlyle-Clarke. He said the case was also affecting the health of his elderly mother, June, a member of the Pleydell-Railston family, who are registered as landowners in the Domesday Book. The 1,200-acre Clenston Manor has been in the family since it was built in the 1500s.

‘June is on oxygen 16 hours a day. This has all hit her very hard,’ he said.

Lawyers acting for Carlyle-Clarke, who has no criminal record, appealed last week to have the case heard by judges in the House of Lords. If that fails, American law enforcement agents could arrive in Britain by the end of February to carry out the extradition order.

Carlyle-Clarke believes his extradition could be part of the deal that led to the release of British detainees held in Guantanamo. The deportation was approved by the Home Office at the end of November 2003, 10 days after the controversial visit of President Bush to London, when the Guantanamo prisoners were discussed. During the visit, Tony Blair announced that the fate of the detainees would soon be resolved. The first five prisoners returned to Britain last March and the release of the remaining four British detainees was announced last week.

The Home Office said it could not comment on individual extradition cases, but said that no fast-track ‘housekeeping’ deal had been done with the United States over long-standing extradition requests. The Foreign Office denied that any deal had been done in return for the return of the Guantanamo detainees.

The American authorities have been pursuing Carlyle-Clarke since the late Eighties, when his name was connected with a £60 million deal to import cannabis into the US east coast from the Caribbean. As a young man, he skippered and raced yachts around the world and made a comfortable living sailing boats from Europe for sale in America.

Luxury yachts are a classic cover for the importation of drugs and he came into contact with a man who turned out to be on the fringes of the drug world.

In 1989 he swore an affidavit saying that he had lent a friend, Robert de Lisser, £20,000 to help fight drug charges. De Lisser, who was alleged to be at the centre of the cannabis deal, later absconded while on bail and has been on the run ever since.

Three convicted criminals involved in the deal have since sworn affidavits that a yacht owned by Carlyle-Clarke, The Can Can of Arne, was used to transport two shipments of drugs, something he strenuously denies. Carlyle-Clarke is alleged to have committed the offences between January 1983 and May 1988, but it took the US authorities until the mid-Nineties to trace him to England despite the fact that the original affidavit about the loan to De Lisser included his address and the name of the boat, which he still owned. He was finally arrested in Dorset in December 1997, and spent three months in various prisons including Brixton and Wormwood Scrubs.

He says he still finds it extraordinary that it took so long to apply for his extradition as his British address has been the same since his childhood and had been held by the American judicial system since he signed the affidavit in 1989. Although he has spent much of his time in Indonesia since he set up a business importing reproduction furniture in 1990, he claims it would be nonsense to describe him as a fugitive. He has always conducted his business under his real name and even visited the United States in 1992.

The delays in the case on this side of the Atlantic have also been unacceptable lengthy, according to his solicitor, Graham Compton. From January 1999, when magistrates granted the American request for extradition, it took 31 months for the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, to come to a decision that Carlyle-Clarke should be deported.

Further representations about the alleged unfairness of the delay in the original extradition request and Carlyle-Clarke’s clean record failed to move Blunkett, who issued a final decision on 27 November 2003.

A judicial review of the decision a year later found in Blunkett’s favour, leaving the aristocrat with one further option of appealing for leave to take his case to the House of Lords.

In a final throw of the dice, lawyers will ask the new Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, to give assurances that his predecessor’s refusal was not politically motivated.

They will also demand full disclosure of the number of extradition requests to the US granted by the Home Secretary in the weeks immediately following the visit of the American President on 18 November 2003.

Compton told The Observer that it was difficult to see how natural justice could be seen to be done in the Carlyle-Clarke case, whatever the truth of the allegations against him: ‘In this country, all you hope for from custody is that a person becomes a useful member of society and that’s precisely what Giles is. After all this time, it would be wrong to take him back.’

A noble lineage

1066: The Pleydell-Railstons, maternal ancestors of Giles Carlyle-Clarke, are mentioned in the Domesday Book as owning land in Dorset.

1095-1204: Members of he family are believed to have participated in the Crusades.

1500: Work begins on the building of Clenston Manor.

1958: Giles Carlyle-Clarke is born, the son of Richard and June Carlyle-Clarke. His father is a farmer and landowner.

1980: He qualifies as a yacht skipper and spends the rest of the decade sailing between the US and the Caribbean and across Europe.

May 1989: He lends $20,000 for legal fees to a friend accused of drug trafficking.

1990: He relocates to Indonesia to set up a furniture export business.

1992: He marries an Italian model. She gives birth to a daughter five months later. They divorce in 1994.

1995: Marries an 18-year-old Indonesian woman. She soon gives birth to his son, Max. They separate shortly afterwards.

June 1995: Chain gangs are re-introduced to the Alabama penal system after a 30-year gap.

December 1997: He is arrested in Britain, accused of smuggling 13,000lb of cannabis to Florida from the Caribbean between 1983 and 1988.

November 2003: Extradition to America is approved by the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett.

• This article was amended on 3 October 2017 to remove a name.
  

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaK2bZH9xfJRooZqmX2aDcMHSmmWgrZGjwaK6wKam