The US quietly informed British courts that US law enforcement has a right to kidnap foreigns who are accused of crimes in the United States. Apparently extradition hearings are just courtesies to the peons in the rest of the world who think the international law applies globally, inclusive of the US. Check out Leppard’s article “US Says It Has Right To Kidnap British Citizens.”
[Alun Jones QC, representing the US government] said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse – it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”
He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.
If senior members of the Bush administration were kidnapped and flown to Europe to stand trail for war crimes. . . do you think Bush would complain? Just saying that turnabout is fair play.
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