Although I have no axe to grind over Christopher Skase, I would like to make a couple of arguments. First of all I do not think the Bulletin needed to receive flak from a reader complaining about his front page coverage. He is a celebrity who lives on Majorca and as such deserves such coverage, particularly when a Commonwealth country is trying to take him to court and has dealings with this island.
The second argument refers to the phrase trying to take him to court since it seems to me that the Australian Prime Minister is jumping the gun when he likens Christopher Skase to Ronald Biggs the train robber.
In the case of Biggs he was a convicted felon and an escapee from jail who has been claimed for many years by the British authorities. In Skase's case he is an accused man, wanted for questioning in an Australian court, who handed himself over to the Spanish authorities at the time and was not extradited following full Spanish legal procedure.
What I have always heard is that a man is innocent until he is proven guilty. In which case the only way he could be likened to Biggs is in the way that two countries would like to be able to get them out of two other foreign countries, but one is for further convicted imprisonment and the other is to follow the process of an unconvicted accusation.
Not quite the same but then lawyers may be able to enlighten me.
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