US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

Skybird · 12-06-07, 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NEON DEON

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

Quote:

Originally Posted by NEON DEON

The US has extradition treaties with both the UK and Germany.

If you are a German citizen and you commit an extraditable crime in the US and flee to Germany, then be prepared to face trial in the US or sometimes Germany.

If Germany refuses to honor the treaty, anything goes. Afterall, you broke the treaty.

A site dealing with extradition law:

http://www.internationalextraditionblog.com/firm.html

In order to brake a treaty, you must first tell your partner that there is a case, and ask him to comply. If you hide it from him, then you have no case to tell him he broke the treaty. And that is what it is about: that you honour the treaty yourself and first knock on the door before kicking it in, and not to think you must not take care of that treaty yourself.

Extradition treaties also cause problems when the partner country has a constitution that prohibits the handing over of suspects of it's own nationality. :hmm: Another limitation often is if the suspect could face death penalty in the country wanting him.

Then you have no business signing a treaty if it violates your constitution.

BTW

When did the US kidnap German citizens from Germany and bring them back to trial in the US?:hmm:

The last was al Masri, two years ago. several other examples exist, from germany and other european countries. Or just consider the secret CIA flioghts inEurope, bringing suspects to torture camps, sometimes kidnapping them from European countries (lioke Al Masri), and here not only avoiding legal notice of foreign nations, but even actively avoiding one's opwn American laws.

But that is not the point. the point is a statement of a principal right one nation is claiming to have, being allowed to overrule the right and the sovereignity of any other nation in the world, at it's own will, anytime, anywhere, circumventing "partners" of legal agreements, deceiving them and leaving them in the dark, if possible.

Signing those treaties still makes sense, because they include these exceptions from the beginning and make them known to the other side. If the other side does not like these exceptions - then it is not making sense indeed to sign that treaty. This is included in article 14 of the agreement between the EU and the US on extradition. And a separate article 15 rules for mutual consultations whenever a call for extradition is being made, to clear all formal issues and remaining questions. It says nothing about secret kidnapping and ignoring this treaty. And article 17 finally admits the principal possebility that a state rejects extradition for fomal reason deriving from it's constitution, and explicitly recommends mutual consultations not between the EU and the US, but the according European coiuntry and the Us if there are other reasons to reject extradition that are not covered by this treaty or any of the constitutions.

what I find bewildering is that the treaty lists quite explicit obligations and rules for the EU, but no explicit ones for america. Statistics say that far more extraditions are made from the EU to the US, than the other way around.

The last request by germany to the US over 13 CIA agents being engaged in secret abduction operations in Germany were shot down.

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