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Extradition of Warez Suspect Blocked
An anonymous reader writes "Following up on an earlier Slashdot story, the extradition of alleged DrinkorDie leader Hew Raymond Griffiths has been denied. The judge in the case ruled that Griffiths, an Australian who had never set foot in the United States, had committed the alleged actions in Australia and had never fled from an extradition country. Therefore, the US hadn't made its case. Griffiths' attorney points out that he should have faced trial in Australia if anywhere, but .au authorities never charged him, which upset the DOJ and led to the extradition attempt. More info can also be found. The US (represented by Australian prosecutors) have fifteen days to appeal. One wonders how the US government would react if a foreign nation tried a similar approach."
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know, that US govt would never give away one of their citizens to another countries authorities....
As a joke, on Wikipedia, I made 51st state a redirect to Canada. Minutes later, I got some pretty angry messages - until the others realized I wasn't being serious. In the end, we turned '51st state' into a legitimate article (probably the only one on the subject).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
To answer your question: One wonders how the US government would react if a foreign nation tried a similar approach.
In July 1998 in Rome, 120 Member States of the United Nations adopted a treaty to establish - for the first time in the history of the world - a permanent international criminal court. [source UN].
And this is what the US had to say about it: "This is to inform you, in connection with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court adopted on July 17, 1998, that the United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty. Accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000. The United States requests that its intention not to become a party, as expressed in this letter, be reflected in the depositary's status lists relating to this treaty."[source UN]
Thus the US has no intention of ever handing over any of its citizens to even an internationa court. However, the US department of justice (ha ha) has the audacity to try to extradite an Australian national under extra vires conditions.
The US thinks it is the world policeman. But it is not willing to police itself. I am glad Australia finally stood up to the global bully. I hope Australians vote Howard out at the next elections and follow the example set by the brave people of Spain.
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Imagine that Joe Cracker is an American who hacks BritBank from his home in Wisconsin. He's committed a crime in two countries. Britain wants him and files for extradition. The US DOJ wants another headline-grabbing case. Realistically, DOJ would probably try Joe in US courts and upon conviction, send him over for trial in the UK on the condition that he be returned to the US to serve his US jail term, after which he'd be shipped to the British prison if they wanted.
It changes a little if Joe Cracker is a British citizen. The US may be more willing to let the British courts have him and simply deport him, saving the troublesome extradition hearings.
Consider a much more realistic and historical case: Gary Lauck, prime producer and shipper of neo-Nazi material to Europe. He's an American citizen who shipped the stuff to, among other countries, Germany, where it's illegal. Germany filed for extradition and the U.S. steadfastly refused on the grounds he had broken no U.S. law. He couldn't be nailed for the content due to First Amendment and he couldn't be nailed on Postal charges because, while illegal in the recipient country, there was nothing fraudulent or illegal about his shipping the materials in general.
Germany finally did get hold of him when he went to Denmark. Seem El Fuhrerito forgot about the EU and that if Germany had a warrant that Denmark would honour it. The U.S. didn't fight this, but only because the entire process took place after Lauck had voluntarily left U.S. soil.
woof.
Many of the american pilots are on amphetamines. Most pilots on really long or late night missions use amphetamines. They use dexadrine (time released Dextro-Amphetamine) to keep them awake and alert. Dexadrine is prescribed for a lot of diagnosed ADD/ADHD people in the US. Dexadrine causes some pilots to make decisions too quickly. When a pilot has to make life and death decisions on a regular basis such as they do on some missions the Dexadrine may make them be wrong. The pilots are often worried about ground targets being a threat to the and often choose to eliminate the target instead of risking that its really an enemy SAM site.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
You will be branded a Rogue State(tm), part of The Axis Of Evil(tm), Your President/Prime Minister/Supreme Commander/Russian Overlord will be declared an Evildoer(tm), all your money will be taken, you will be held responsible for a terrorist attack in the form of an executive pretzel swallowing incident, and thus, after your nation has been drained from all resources, brainpower and any other useful assets, it will get the shit bombed out of it. When that is done your country will be placed on the WTO/WIPO shitlist, so your country won't have enough money to recover. Haliburton (owned by the vice prez of the country that wanted you extradited in the first place) will offer to rebuild your infrastructure he so thoughtfully bombed a month before, at outrageous cost, and then Monsalto will come and force GM crops down your populations throats at a high price (subscriptions available, terms and conditions apply), to be paid yearly.
Of course, being a good citizen of the Western World(tm) I merely jest, and at no time have thought any Really Unpatriotic Thoughts.... hang on, what are those black heli [no carrier]
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Well, consider that the US actually made invasion plans of the Netherlands to "liberate" Americans held captive for trial by the international court in The Hague.
One could therefore argue that the US wouldn't be playing by the usual rules when an extradition request is made...
That reminds me of that American family I noticed in some European capital: Small girl knocks over thrash can by accident. Makes a lot of noise. No big deal, no harm done. She looks up at her Dad expecting some kind of reprimande, but the guy says "Don't worry Honey, you're an American citizen, they can't hurt you."
That incident really illustrates how Americans regard foreigners and maybe this also explains the latest 3-4 years of American foreign policy.
Sigh. Here goes my karma --wheeeee
IIRC there's a law in the United States which they used to capture drug kings in the South America (late 90's?). The law says that US authorities have a right to arrest persons of other nationalities outside US. I wonder if they'll try that out now.
It was widely discussed in Finland if US authorites could arrest Finnish person in Finland. Officials considered that it would count as a military action.
And I wonder what people in US would think if Germany would start arresting people in US for selling swastika flags to Germany...
?SYNTAX ERROR
Just remember that the first immigration wave in America were persecuted in their own Old Europe => Non-papists in France, papists in the UK, people with a "knack" considered as withcraft everywhere, people that lost everything due to war, Dutch that tried to escape their crowded and quite intolerant society, and then of courses, slaves brought out from Africa, and so on...
...etc, ad nauseatum.
So from my point of view, Americans and Aussies are quite equal at their beginning : derelicts, outcasts and unwanted.
The only difference is that on the whole, at least until recently, the Aussies were considered as less bastards and less imperialists than the US.
Also, the American problem is that the very good ideas in the constitution have been perverted by corporations and protestant integrists...They made the money from the slave triangle (Silk, ores, ware, exchanged for slaves, exchanged for money, that bought local wares, that got transformed into
At lease the Aussies had the "excuse" of being considered as BAD ppl (extraded UK Criminals, and anybody that was making a fuss against the local gov) so anything they did was an improvement.
Americans should have done better, seeing their "nobler origins" of persecuted.
On the whole, I still would prefer Canada to the US, and Australia to the US.
Alas, the richest is also the meanest...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
What is the point of this story and 90% of the comments in it? As far as I can ascertain, lazy as I am, the story is something like this:
- Australian guy breaks US law.
- US asks Australia for extradition.
- Australia tries the case in a court like any normal country would do.
- Court says no.
The whole point of the court system is to decide these things. So what if the US made a somewhat unreasonable request? They said no! It's not like they said, "Give him to us or we'll bomb your country."
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
nope its a court discesion. Howard would have handed him over in a second. Either that or he knows he's done for in November and is trying to stand up for oz.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
More convicts were sent to the USA than to Australia. The only reason that England started to send convicts here to Australia was that the independence of the USA prevented them from sending any more there.
OLPC Australia
I'm still trying to figure exactly which law was broken to make it an illegal war.
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IANAL but don't extradition treaties usually relate to somebody fleeing to another country?
i.e: I blow away my wife then hop on a plane to Australia. The United States can extradite me because I'm: A) Accused of a crime here, B) An American citizen.
Again IANAL but I think it becomes ten times more sticky when you start talking about trying to extradite the citizen of another country whereas if you ask for one of your own it's usually a no brainer.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I guess the US liberating Iraq is actually a noble attempt to try and make up for the CIA's sponsorship of Saddam's rise to power in the 1960s....
You know, I'd be laughing my ass off if the situation weren't so grim. This is about one little fuckwit's attempt to avenge his daddy, not anything noble about getting rid of Saddam and freeing the Iraqi people. You'll note that "freedom for the Iraqi people" didn't even make the list of reasons we invaded Iraq until AFTER it started to look like the other reasons were a crock of feces.
This is a personal war, not a Presidential one, and it's a pity our soldiers and Iraqi civilians have to die just because someone embarassed the Bush family name. Saddam was NOT an immediate threat (really, I'm not even sure he was a credible threat this time around); he was a problem that could have waited until we had finished our work elsewhere.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.