EXTRADITION POLICY IS POLITICS IN ANOTHER GUISE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T02051R000200350024-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2011
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: July 28, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/08/12 :CIA-RDP05T02051 8000200350024-5 ~?
'WASHINGTON POST'
NEW ,;YORK TIMES
WALL STREET JOURNAL
`WASHIN'GTON TIMES
USA TQDAY
. .,
THURSDAY, JULY Z8, 1988
i Letters
DATE o2?~,7Lt_y~
STAT
Extradition Policy Is Politics in Another Guise
To the Editor:
' The problem of enforcing the nor-
mal criminal law against "terrorists"
i~ simpler than appears to those
quoted in "The Arm of American Law
'~urns Qut o Be Not So Long" (Week
itt Revfew,'7uly 3). The "political ot?
f~nse" exception to extradition obliga-
tions does 'not apply to a number of
what are normally considered terror-
tat offenses?fin supervening treaty law,
eirtd thole cases in which the exception
lies blocked extradition appear mainly
to involve the kinds of acts soldiers
perform, acts that in a military con-
text are ntlt crimes at ail.
Indeed, 'many Americans are de-
scended from the failed revolution-
aries of 19th-century Europe, who
were called criminal by the govern-
ments'they~ sought to overthrow by
"unauthorized" force; the Minute-
trten of Lexington and Concord were
regarded as criminals by the British
authorities of the time;. John Paul
Jonas was called a pirate because the
authority of the Continental Congress
to issue his letters of marque was
denied by the British.
The problem with the atrocious acts
that foreign and American courts
have held to be political (and thus not
subject, to extradition because part of
apolitical :struggle) appears to be a
legal cotlfusion by the executive
branch, not the courts. Accepting the
plea of the Puerto Rican "freedom
Lighter" William Morales, whose ex-
tradition to the United States was
denied'by Mexico, would not free him
from legal accountability; it would
subject hint to the laws of war. Under
the 1949 Geneva Conventions, target-
ing civilians cou;d be "murder," re-
quiring the state to which he fled to try
him or extradite him.
As tar as 1 can see, either Mr. Mo-
rales's acts were not such as to exceed
what our own failed-revolutionary an?
castors did before leaving their Euro-
pean struggles, or we never sought ex-
tradition except under the normal
criminal law, which is not necessarily
the law that applies for political ris?
ings. That we wish, for political rett?
sons at home, to call Mr. Morales a
common criminal does no[ bind him or
Mexico to that categorization.
The obvious answer is to seek to
have him extradited as either a com-
mon criminal or war criminal, at the
discretion of the Mexican courts.
Since both results are the same, he
would be extradited without Mexico's
having to determine which is the :+p-
propriate law, thus preserving "neu-
trality" in a question of legal (abelinfi.
The same reasoning applies to'~he
case of Mohammed Ali Hamadei, a
Palestinian [rom Lebanon wanted in
the 1985 hijack of a T.W.A. jetliner, ex-
cept that West Germany is trying Mr.
Hamadei as required by the 1970
Hague Convention on Aerial Hijacking
and the 1949 Prisoners of War and
Civilians Conventions that make a
"grave breach" of the murder of the
Navy diver Robert Stethem.
e only loophole would be cases in
wh h courts hold the law of war inap?
pit bk, though the offense is political
in sense of an extradition treaty,
th allowing a legal haven fur a time
fot those who, were they soldiers,
would be war criminals or "grave
breachers" of one or another of the
1949 conventions. It is hard to see that
result standing the test of experience
or legislative attention.
The odd thing about all this is that
the 1949 Geneva conventions and other
tltultilateral treaties we are a party to
that. remove the political ottense ex-
ception where there is an international
consensus, like aerial hijacking, are
not regarded by the Justice Depart-
ment as treaties for setting the usual
extradition procedures in motion. And
our supplemental extradition treaty
with Britain, which does trigger proce-
dures and Incorporates some of the
.multilateral treaties, has been used in
the Joseph Doherty and Peter McMul-
lencases without reference to the mul-
tilateral treaties, apparently because
under them neither of those men
would be extraditable.
Thus, it appears that United States
officials are really complaining that
they cannot use extradition to ally us
with a foreign government that calls
its enemies "criminals" or, as in the
Morales and Hamadei cases, exer-
cise American jurisdiction over
American political fanatics fleeing
abroad or foreign fanatics who are
being tried by a concerned govern-
ment. ALFRED P. RUBIN
Prot. of Intl. Law, Fletcher School
of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts U.
Medford, Mass., July 12,1988
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