Court rules in favour of Crucible ex-chief's extradition

Ian Norris, the former Morgan Crucible chief executive, today faced a major blow to his attempts to fight off extradition to the US.

In a case with echoes of the NatWest Three, Norris is fighting to avoid extradition under the controversial laws between Britain and the US that were originally set up to make it easier for the US to try terrorist suspects.

He is alleged to have participated in a secret cartel to fix the price of carbon products used in American trains while working for the engineering group. The alleged activity is said to have taken place in 1989 and 1990.

The House of Lords ruled in March that the charges of price-fixing did not warrant his being handed over to the US authorities. But at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court today, a judge declared he should be extradited on separate charges of obstruction of justice.

The allegations, made by prosecutors in Pennsylvania, were of "such gravity", said the judge, that he should stand trial in the US.

Retired Norris, 65, who has prostate cancer, has been fighting extradition for five years, and has consistently denied any wrongdoing.

The Law Lords' ruled in the spring that he could not be extradited for price-fixing because cartel activity was not sufficiently criminal to warrant extradition until 2003.

But they left open the question of whether he could still be extradited on obstruction of justice.

Norris' legal team had argued that the obstruction of justice case was a "subsidiary" allegation to the main price-fixing one.

But Judge Nicholas Evans rejected that argument.