The fate of the "NatWest Three" rests in the hands of the US justice system, yet it is the British Government the former bankers have maintained is responsible for ntheir extradition to America.

David Bermingham, the most publicly outspoken of the three, said before he left the UK that he did not resent the US authorities for pursuing the case.

Mr Bermingham, of Goring, south Oxfordshire, said the issue at stake was not whether or not he was innocent of the fraud charges, which he and his former colleagues have always denied.

Rather, he said, the issue that angered businessmen, politicians and human rights advocates was the failure of the British authorities to protect their own citizens.

He accused the British Government of “burying its head in the sand”.

He claimed the Americans were using the extradition treaty only because it was handed to them on a plate by the then-Home Secretary David Blunkett in the wake of the attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.

“We have always fought against the policies behind rather than the facts of our case,” he said.

“This could happen to any British citizen. There are 18 people, mostly anonymous, behind us waiting to be chewed up and spat out.

“My views on the Government are quite frankly unprintable. There is not another nation on the planet that would put their own citizens in this situation.

“If these are crimes at all, they are British crimes.”

Speaking in July last year, just days before his extradition, Mr Bermingham said he would “welcome” the chance to face the UK courts.

“We have been trying for the last three years to get tried in the UK. These are serious allegations and I would welcome the opportunity to face them in court.

“The difficulty we have is that everything we need to defend this case is here in the UK. This is a UK matter and the US connection is tenuous at best.”

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