[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

Equal treatment under the law is a cornerstone of our legal system. I dunno how Germany feels about this but here in the US you cannot tailor laws against individuals. There can be no exceptions for "extreme circumstances". Either everyone is potentially subject to a particular treatment or nobody is.

While this "law" may technically allow common criminals like your crooked bankers to be abducted, it would never be used on such small fry because of all the damage to international relations that it would cause when (not if) word of the abduction got out. Let alone the problems it would generate if the agents were caught (see the Gary Powers incident) by a foreign government.

What I believe this is designed to do is to make sure that if we do manage to snatch some "extraordinary" criminal from a foreign country without following strict extradition law our own courts won't force us to let him go.

then my answer would be NO even with regard to most serious circumstances, and barbars like in the examples I listed: Hitler, etc. Because the American demand to be the judge of all world and being free to overrule any other nation's law and sovereignity at will is totally unacceptable - for principal reasons as well as for America not being in the moral position to ride the high horse, too.