I’m writing spy fiction and part of it involves one country sending personnel to an allied nation, to apprehend an enemy spy in that country.
So, for instance: Russian spy has been spying in America and also committed various crimes while in America. Russian spy is now in Britain. America sends counterintelligence personnel to Britain (with Britain’s permission) to apprehend the Russian spy, in London.
(For various reasons, the Americans would prefer that the Brits ***not ***do it themselves - that is, apprehend this Russian in London, and then extradite him/her to the USA.)
Is there any remote chance in real life that the Brits (or any other ally) would consent to this sort of thing? Would it be legal, from an American or British perspective?
Assuming we’re not talking about black ops rendition spy thriller stuff, I would doubt it. When a spy is apprehended, typically they are arrested, all legal and above board. Then extradition happens, if they are caught in a different country. After all, espionage is simply an illegal activity like murder or money laundering. What would be the ramifications if it came out what happened? The spy or his lawyer could sue the British government, press charges against the kidnappers, etc. Or, when the government changes, the new government may not have the same wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude.
Note in this case, Italians were charged too but their case fell apart when the government pleaded “national security”.
Is it actually a US-UK situations for the book? The Five Eyes intelligence sharing agreement countries (US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) are so interconnected doing it without their knowledge seems a little odd. Allowing it wouldn’t trigger the same loss of disbelief as long as there was at least a hand waved justification. It’s not like we wouldn’t be looking at intelligence sharing, let alone extradition, if they nabbed him and exploited the sight for us.
It’s relatively common for one nation to use “rendition” (essentially kidnapping) on a suspect in another country without getting permission from that country and then bringing them back to their own country. It happened lots of times shortly after 9/11.
A few cases in the news lately: Italy is arresting a US CIA agent for doing that (Italy Reduces Sentence for Ex-C.I.A. Officer Sought in Rendition Case - The New York Times) and China recently did it to a suspect in Hong Kong (yes, technically Hong Kong is part of China, but they’re still supposed to go through the local authorities https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/world/asia/xiao-jianhua-china-hong-kong-billionaire.html )
However, it’s almost alwasy between countries that aren’t especially close (like the US and Turkey, say). It would be highly unusual for two close allies like the US and UK to do it to each other – in that situation, you’d usually be able to get the other country’s police to make the arrest for you.
So no, it would not be likely that the US would nab a spy in Britain. (But of course, with secret operations, for your book you can always say the spys operate with little oversight and are breaking the rules, in which case you can have them do whatever your plot requires).
The US and UK have a pretty robust extradition relationship - the US has very rarely refused an extradition request from the UK, and the UK only sometimes declines an extradition request from the US (although they do decline rather more often than the US does).
In a circumstaqnce where an individual was wanted for crimes in the US, the US authorities would issue an arrest warrant, and submit this to the UK via the proper diplomatic authorities, whom would forward the request to HM government, which would rule on the propriety of the warrant, and if in agreement, issue a UK warrant for arrest. Once under arrest, extradition procedings would begin.
What is plausible, and fairly common, is for US law enforcement to fly to the UK to question (under due process) the suspect whilst held in custody.
It’s very plausible that the US would want to do the job themselves, but would the UK agree? And if they didn’t, would the US want to do it over their objections? It’s one thing to ignore the wishes of some third-world podunk, but quite another for a major ally like the UK.
The UK government would be extremely embarrassed (and face huge legal liablities) if it ever emerged that they had agreed to or facilitated something like this. They’d much prefer that the US would apply through the usual channels to have the subject arrested and extradited. If for some reason that wasn’t an option and the US was committed to basically kidnapping the guy, then it would be best (from the UK government’s point of view) if they did that without the knowledge or assent of the UK. That way, if the whole sorry story came to light, the UK government would not be legally responsble or politically accountable for what was done.
Thus, the US would know that the UK government would be embarrassed to be asked to agree to something like this. Thus, if they are going to do it at all, they will do it unilaterally. Obviously, if it comes to light, there’ll be damage to the UK/US relationship, but probably less damage than would result from actually asking the UK government to pay along.
And of course the US could simply hire some bounty hunters to capture the subject and return him/her to the US-no questions need be asked. That way no government has to be embarrassed by awkward questions-all the risk is on the bounty hunters who are presumably well paid for their trouble. The DEA in the US has apparently done that a few times with drug dealers in Mexico. They put out a contract-sorry a warrant-on someone, hang around a certain border crossing and suddenly a car drives up and out pops someone with an outstanding warrant. For the UK, presumably one would have to substitute a plane for the car. In the US the courts here have long held that people who skip out on bail have agreed when they obtained the bail money that the bondsman can go anywhere and do whatever is necessary to recover their money. It seems that on occasion the US Government has extended that concept to people who haven’t yet signed anything. Perhaps it is an implied contract? (kidding. I remember reading about these incidents but it was controversial at the time).
