Nixon’s AG. Besides being convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in the Watergate scandal he also engaged in a lot of stuff like illegal wiretapping and trumping up bogus charges against war protesters.
Incidentally, Sam Dash died today. For the young’uns, he was the lead prosecutor for Watergate.
What is the “International Human Rights Act”? In my years of study of international law I never heard of it, and a google search doesn’t turn up anything useful.
Why did signing a treaty that limited deportation make Blair a fucking moron?
Isn’t it the European Convention on Human Rights (as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights) that prohibits the UK from extraditing suspects who might face the death penalty? I don’t think Blair had any choice about signing such a law.
Ah, right. Thanks. No wonder I couldn’t remember him, with all the scum that Nixon had working for him.
The U.K. is not the only country with this policy by any means, nor is the U.S. the only country that has difficulty gaining extraditions because of the death penalty. Here is an Amnesty International report on the issue.
The U.S. has been known to find ways around this. We are by no means shy about kidnapping people we want. From the cited report:
Obviously, our joining the rest of the civilized world in the abolishment of the death penalty would remove this barrier to extradition. As to kidnapping of foreign nationals from foreign countries, one can only trust to our goodwill and willingness to abide by our international agreements. One can, can’t one?
My understanding is that he has not had British citizenship removed, yet, but that there was a legal process going on to do so, and that various appeals would also have to be heard first and that this would take time.
I was also of the understanding that the intention was to deport him which would also involve a lengthy appeals process.
I believe you will find that the only thing to have been removed from Hamsa is his right to state benefits, but this is due to certain rules about income.
The US would be extremely foolishly short sighted if it were to execute Hamsa as any subsequent extradition request from the US to any European Act nation would almost certainly result in a successful appeal against extradition.
It would even be very foolish to pass a death sentence without enacting it too as this would likely make extremely good grounds for appeal against extradition.
I also note the irony here that the US is requesting extradition of an accused terrorist when European nations, particularly the UK, have found extradition of terrorists from the US to be so difficult as to effectively make it a worthless excercise to attempt to get Irish murderers back to the UK to face the trials they so richly deserve.
Maybe we should simply hang on to Hamsa and reply to this nasty little tinpot US leadership that “What goes around comes around”.