BRITAIN’s overcrowded prisons are internationally recognised as unfit for purpose, campaigners said today after a German court blocked the extradition of a suspected drug trafficker over human rights concerns.

Lawyer Jan-Carl Janssen won the release of a suspected Albanian drug dealer, who is accused of trafficking 5kg of cocaine and laundering about £330,000 while in Britain, by telling judges in south-west Germany about the inadequacies of British prisons.

Today, Howard League for Penal Reform campaigns director Andrew Neilson said: “Our prison conditions are not only unable to provide a healthy and safe environment for the people in them but are now internationally recognised as unfit for purpose.

“That British prisons are notorious for posing a human rights risk should heap shame on the government, who continue to cram more and more people into them, with no thought for safety, wellbeing or rehabilitation.”

Mr Janssen told the German court that his client’s rights might be at risk unless the British authorities provided more specific information, according to a report in German legal journal Strafverteidiger.

Police in Manchester told the judges that the Albanian would probably be held in London, but Mr Janssen said that HMP Wandsworth, in west London, was operating at 160 per cent of its nominal capacity, the journal said.

The suspect, who has not been named, was released after the court’s request for more details was not answered in time.

Mr  Neilson added: “Repeatedly, official inspections have revealed our prisons to be filthy and riddled with vermin. People eat — and go to the toilet — in cramped cells with poor ventilation and it is common for two people to be forced to share a cell designed for one.

“Facilities have become dilapidated as a maintenance backlog has grown. Restricted regimes, often due to staff shortages, leave people stuck in their cells for up to 23 hours a day, unable to exercise or attend education and training.”

The Albanian had been arrested soon after Christmas in response to an international arrest warrant issued by Westminster magistrates’ court.

Following Britain’s withdrawal from the European arrest warrant scheme at the end of 2020, EU judges seek reassurances from authorities here when they believe that there is a “real risk to the fundamental rights of the requested person” if they are extradited to this country.