Extradition

Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties. Where extradition is compelled by laws, such as among sub-national jurisdictions, the concept may be known more generally as rendition.

Extradition treaties or agreements

The consensus in international law is that a state does not have any obligation to surrender an alleged criminal to a foreign state as one principle of sovereignty is that every state has legal authority over the people within its borders. Such absence of international obligation and the desire of the right to demand such criminals of other countries have caused a web of extradition treaties or agreements to evolve; most countries in the world have signed bilateral extradition treaties with most other countries.

No country in the world has an extradition treaty with all other countries; for example, the United States lacks extradition treaties with several nations, including the People's Republic of China, Namibia, the United Arab Emirates, North Korea, and Bahrain.

Bars to extradition

By enacting laws or concluding treaties or agreements, countries determine the conditions under which they may entertain or deny extradition requests. Common bars to extradition include:

• Failure to fulfill dual criminality - generally the act for which extradition is sought must constitute a crime punishable by some minimum penalty in both the requesting and the requested parties.
• Political nature of the alleged crime - most countries refuse to extradite suspects of political crimes.
• Possibility of certain forms of punishment - some countries refuse extradition on grounds that the person, if extradited, may receive capital punishment or face torture. A few go as far as to cover all punishments that they themselves would not administer.
• Jurisdiction - Jurisdiction over a crime can be invoked to refuse extradition. In particular, the fact that the person in question is a nation's own citizen causes that country to have jurisdiction.
• Own nationals - Some countries, such as France, Germany, Russia, Austria, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Japan, forbid extradition of their own nationals. These countries often have laws in place that give them jurisdiction over crimes committed abroad by or against citizens. By virtue of such jurisdiction, they prosecute and try citizens accused of crimes committed abroad as if the crime had occurred within the country's borders. Some nations refuse to extradite their own citizens, holding trials for the persons themselves (see e.g. trial of Xiao Zhen).
• Death penalty - Many countries, such as Australia, Canada, Macao, Mexico and most European nations, will not allow extradition if the death penalty may be imposed on the suspect unless they are assured that the death sentence will not be passed or carried out.
• Torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment - Many countries will not extradite if there is a risk that a requested person will be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In the case of Soering v United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights held that it would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights to extradite a person to the United States from the United Kingdom in a capital case. This was due to the harsh conditions on death row and the uncertain timescale within which the sentence would be executed.

Controversies

International tensions

The refusal of a country to extradite suspects or criminals to another may lead to international relations being strained. Often, the country to which extradition is refused will accuse the other country of refusing extradition for political reasons (regardless of whether or not this is justified). A case in point is that of Ira Einhorn, in which some US commentators pressured President Jacques Chirac of France, who does not intervene in legal cases, to permit extradition when the case was held up due to differences between French and American human rights law. Another long-standing example is Roman Polanski whose extradition the State of California has pursued for over 20 years. For a brief period he was placed under arrest in Switzerland, however subsequent legal appeals there prevented extradition.

The questions involved are often complex when the country from which suspects are to be extradited is a democratic country with a rule of law. Typically, in such countries, the final decision to extradite lies with the national executive (prime minister, president or equivalent). However, such countries typically allow extradition defendants recourse to the law, with multiple appeals. These may significantly slow down procedures. On the one hand, this may lead to unwarranted international difficulties, as the public, politicians and journalists from the requesting country will ask their executive to put pressure on the executive of the country from which extradition is to take place, while that executive may not in fact have the authority to deport the suspect or criminal on their own. On the other hand, certain delays, or the unwillingness of the local prosecution authorities to present a good extradition case before the court on behalf of the requesting state, may possibly result from the unwillingness of the country's executive to extradite.

For example, there is at present a disagreement between the United States and the United Kingdom about the Extradition Act 2003 (text here) that dispenses with the need for a prima facie case for extradition.

This came to a head over the extradition of the Natwest Three from the UK to the U.S., for their alleged role in the Enron fraud. Several British political leaders were heavily critical of the British government's handling of the issue. The former leader of the UK's Liberal Democrat party, Sir Menzies Campbell, had argued that the U.S. had not ratified the treaty primarily due to the influence of what he calls the "Irish lobby" – which, he said, is opposed to the treaty because it could make it easier for Britain to have alleged IRA terrorist suspects extradited from the U.S.

The precedent of the Natwest Three may also be used to extradite/prosecute Philip Watts in connection with the Royal Dutch Shell reserves scandal. The press has carried vocal criticisms of the present extradition arrangements from the UK's business community, some of whom stated that they were avoiding doing business with or in the U.S. because of legal concerns such as the extradition treaty, among other concerns.

Extradition and abduction

Issues of international law relating to extradition have proven controversial in cases where a state has abducted and removed an individual from the territory of another state without previously requesting permission, or following normal extradition procedures. Such abductions are usually in violation of the domestic law of the country in which they occur, as infringements of laws forbidding kidnapping. Many also regard abduction as violation of international law — in particular of a prohibition on arbitrary detention. A small number of countries have been reported to use kidnapping to circumvent the formal extradition process. Notable or controversial cases include the abduction or attempted abduction of

Year	Name	From	To
1950	Morton Sobell	Mexico	United States
1960	Adolf Eichmann	Argentina	Israel
1967	Isang Yun	West Germany	South Korea
1986	Mordechai Vanunu	Italy	Israel
1990	Humberto Álvarez Machaín	Mexico	United States
1997	Aimal Kasi	Pakistan	United States
1999	Abdullah Ocalan	Kenya	United States, Turkey
2002	Martin Mubanga	Zambia	United States, Guantanamo Bay
2004	Khaled El-Masri	Republic of Macedonia	United States
2005	Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr	Italy	United States, Egypt
2009	Camilla Broe	Denmark	United States
2011	Dirar Abu Seesi	Ukraine	Israel

'Extraordinary rendition'

Main article: Extraordinary rendition

"Extraordinary rendition" is an extrajudicial procedure and policy of the United States in which criminal suspects, generally suspected terrorists or supporters of terrorist organisations, are sent to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation. The procedure differs from extradition as the purpose of the rendition is to extract information from suspects, while extradition is used to return fugitives so that they can stand trial or fulfill their sentence. Critics of the procedure have accused the CIA of rendering suspects to other countries in order to circumvent U.S. laws prescribing due process and prohibiting torture.

See also

• Extraterritorial jurisdiction
• Extraterritoriality
• Universal jurisdiction
• Right of asylum
• Deportation

International:

• Extradition law in the United States
• Extradition law in Australia
• European Arrest Warrant

Individuals:

• Brian O'Rourke (1540?–1591), first man to be extradited within Britain.
• Luis Posada Carriles, anti-Castrist detained in the U.S. and wanted by Cuba and Venezuela

External links

• Extradition Lawyers' Association
• UN list of extradition information by country (1996)
• A Brief Primer on International Law With cases and commentary. Nathaniel Burney, 2007.
• Extraditions Cut Short - Extraditions between Colombia and United States
• Chiquita Board Members: Total Identification - Extradition of Chiquita Board Members
• [1] International Extradition: New Jersey & Other States
• Expulsions and extraditions, factsheet of the ECtHR case law