The UK began re-colonizing the Falkland islands on Jan. 3, 1833. Furthermore, in 1843 Antonio Rivero “El Gaucho” was taken to London to be judged for crimes committed on the islands, but the British high court, despite “the crime,” refused to hear the case of an Argentinean citizen.
(https://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2005/08/08/editorial1.htm)
Why did the British high court refuse to hear the case of an Argentine resident from one of its colonies?
Thank you.
That’s a dead link.
But the wiki says:
The gang was sent for trial in London, but under the British Legal system could not be tried because the Crown Court did not have jurisdiction over the Falkland Islands at the time of the alleged offences. In the British colonial system, colonies had their own, distinct governments, finances, and judicial systems. Rivero was not tried and sentenced because the British local government and local judiciary had not yet been installed in 1834; these were created later, by the 1841 British Letters Patent.
Thank you very much.
But the Antonio Rivero’s case was in 1843 instead of 1834…
Wikipedia says otherwise. Presumably there was a misprint in your original link.
Maybe it was a misprint. Thank you.
copied from the other Falklands post:
The Falklands are going to be British Overseas Territory with self governance for a very, very long time to come.
It’s possible that this would have been different had the Argentinian Jorge Anaya not miscalculated so very, very badly in 1982. Without the botched invasion, Britain may have eventually been persuaded through diplomacy to weaken their claim on the Falklands. Now though? The Falklands will stay British for generations.
Anaya seemed to have figured that a mere woman leader would be weak, and that Argentina could take over the islands easily. He did not know Margaret Thatcher. He seemed also to have not understood the strong relationship between Britain and the USA, via Reagan.
Argentina completely, thoroughly screwed up.
Just to follow up on GreenWyvern’s point, it wasn’t the “British high court”, as such a thing doesn’t exist. It was the Crown Court of England, which only had territorial jurisdiction over England (and likely Wales).
No court ever heard the Rivero case. That it went to trial is a myth. All that happened in 1835 was that British officials decided not to prosecute. In taking that decision, they were inclined to think that the English courts did have jurisdiction and that a conviction could be secured. But they also calculated that there was little point in bringing a prosecution because, given the various extenuating circumstances, they would probably end up finding it convenient to commute the inevitable death sentence.
In their dispute over the case in the pages of the Historical Journal between 1984 and 1987, Richard Ware and John Muffty disagreed sharply over many of the legal technicalities and over which extenuating circumstances mattered. Some of those were issues the courts would doubtless have resolved if the case had ever gone to trial. But it never did.