I should have read the next post. Ok, so we agree on the fact that as a rule, France doesn’t extradite its citizens.
Concerning the case of french nationals being extradited to Algeria, I was completely unaware of this. If true, that would logically means that not extraditing French citizens is a policy, not a law (since otherwise there couldn’t be exceptions). That may be true, I don’t know.
Concerning a french citizen sentenced in the USA, I had already wondered about this because the law states that a french national can’t be prosecuted if he has been already tried, and, if found guilty, he had served his sentence. So, I had wondered whether he could be tried again in France if he escaped right after the trial, or after serving half of his sentence, or two days before the end of a 20 years long sentence.
Nope. The U.S. has extremely strict rules on jurisdiction. If an American commits a murder in Germany or France, then it is up tot he courts in that country to prosecute him. If they do not, America has no jurisdiction in the matter and thus cannot prosecute.
There’s a few exceptions, like I said, members of the military are under the jurisdiction of the military courts across the world. Which both means a member of the U.S. armed forces cannot be tried by the courts of the country in which he commits the crime (unless we surrender them to said court) nor can he avoid prosecution from a courts martial simple because he was not in the United States.
Also, some Federal laws make it a crime to leave the United State with intent to commit certain acts. For example if you travel to Vietnam to hire a child prostitute, that’s a federal crime.
But the crime is specifically, travelling abroad with the intent to violate specific laws, not the actual act of statutory rape (because that actually happened in Vietnam and thus is outside U.S. jurisdiction.)
The Algerian thing may have been some weird issue involving dual nationality combined probably with political aspects. I could be wrong about the whole thing though as I just remember this from the news back in the 1980s.
I think escaped convicts may actually fall under a different treaty, but I’m not sure on that.
Hmmm… I can remember a case of a frenchman who was tried in France for a murder committed in the USA. It was mentionned in the paper I usually read not because the case was particularily exceptionnal, but because the presiding judge displayed a weird behavior during the trial.
Maye you’re rigt, but are you sure that this is the exceptionn rather than the norm? I assume that nor France nor the USA would want a murderer to roam in the streets…
You wouldn’t think either country would want a murderer roaming the streets. Personally I always considered the Ira Einhorn case somewhat ridiculous. While I was none too happy the French were trying to interfere in what basically was an internal U.S. criminal affair (that involved no French citizens) I was also okay with the fact that Einhorn was no longer a threat to any American citizens since he was basically stuck in France (if he had set foot down in the UK or Poland for example he would have been whisked back to the U.S. before he knew what hit him.)
Eventually Einhorn did get sent back to the United States, but Bill Clinton had to all but bludgeon Jospin to get it to happen.
The worst bit of the entire affair was when Einhorn’s extradition proceedings began in France they released him onto the streets. I think some of this behavior borders on outright violation of the extradition treaty, as releasing a convicted murderer who has a history of fleeing from authorities onto the streets makes me question if the French authorities were acting in good faith.
Wasn’t Ira Einhorn this guy who had kept his girlfriend’s body in a chest?
If it’s the case i’m thinking about :
1)It didn’t take 20 years. He fled first to a scandinavian country and later settled in France under an assumed identity. The USA requested his extradition only when he was identified, long afer the crime.
The procedure took several years (but nothing close to 20) because he had been tried in abstentia, and trials in abstentia can’t be definitive under french law. So, whatever US state he had comitted the crime in first had to change its legislation to permit a new trial, or something to that effect. He then exausted all the appeals and recourses avalaible against the extradition decision.
It was indeed the case I was thinkng about. And according to this site , he was indeed both tried in abstentia and sentenced to death.
I begin to have doubts about the statements you’re making.
Also, still according to the same site, it took 16 years to identify him. The extradition procedure took 4 years, including an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Well according to CNN and Wikipedia and this website Einhorn was tried and convicted in absentia in 1993 and sentenced to life in prison.
In fact it would have been impossible for Pennsylvania to sentence Einhorn to death since at the time of his crime Pennsylvania did not have the death penalty (and there’s no retroactive laws in the United States.)
I strongly doubt it. Nor the UK nor Poland, as far as I know, extradite people who’re facing a death sentence. Portugal doesn’t even extradite people facing a life sentence.
Then maybe the first site I checked was wrong or unclear, or I misread it. Anyway, I had mentionned in my first post on this topic that the issue was the trial in abstentia.
Reading Wikipedia’s site, I also notice that this dude wasn’t “set free” as you complained about, but freed under police supervision, which I assume was what is called “assignation à residence”, more or less house arrest, which doesn’t appear to me to be abnormal in this instance, given that it took years (he had been already jaild for several months) and there was no way to tell whether he should be set free or extradited pending a decision of the courts. You can keep in jail for years someone who has not been regularily sentenced acording to the law of the land.
Shouldn’t GW, as a fair and decent man, have these tortures investigated and make sure the people responsible for these actions are brought to justice? Or perhaps he should sit on his hands and ignore the issue entirely, as he seems to be doing so well at this time. I have a feeling all signs point to Rummy, but that’s just IMHO.
That’s not the idea that started this thread, though. This thread was started to bemoan that fact that Bush, while committing criminal acts, would escape judicial sanction by means of his power and influence.
Or maybe GW looks at things in a different way. Perhaps he believes the ends justify the means…certainly due to his past actions I’d say this would be an accurate description of the man. And if he thinks that, distasteful as it is, that its necessary…and if its not illegal…well, why would GW have things investigated and those responsible ‘brought to justice’? You have to look at it from his perspective if you want a real answer to your question.
**Disclaimer. I’m saying look at it from GW’s perspective…I’m not saying in endorse this perspective.
You have to understand the administration has gone through great pains to place prisoners in situations where, if some “coercive measures” are felt necessary the people involved will either be outside of U.S. jurisdiction, or in some sort of legal quagmire that would make it extremely difficult to prosecute them.
The location and the people involved isn’t accidental.
“Color of law” refers to someone who derives authority from enforcing the law. I doubt it would apply to a CIA agent whose purpose is to gather intelligence, although perhaps if the agent used his credentials and claimed he was enforcing US law, it might.
I’d be very surprised if that were true for Guantanamo interrogations. But if it is, then you might argue the law applied.