“ A German citizen has gone to court in an attempt to force his government to seek the extradition of 13 suspected CIA agents who allegedly kidnapped him.
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- WARNING: no joking (or even attempted joking)
- the quotation’s from here
- the story’s probably interesting to any lawyer used to the typical legal system in the English-speaking world
- the Stumblng Tumblr doubts whether, in any of those legal systems, a court would be prepared to consider the lawfulness of a decision by the government of its country not to make a request to the government of a foreign country to send it someone to be tried for a criminal offence
- whether the German legal system might allow a different outcome remains to be seen
- the Stumblng Tumblr does note that the German Justice Ministry seems to have given a reason for refusing to seek the extradition of the CIA agents, always a very unwise thing to do if it can be avoided—tell ‘em nothing; they’ll just use it against you afterwards if you do
- the reason seems to have been that “the ministry had been told by Washington that any extradition would jeopardise ‘American national interests’”
- that doesn’t sound to the Stumblng Tumblr like much of a reason from the German point of view, but he wonders whether it’s all a misunderstanding by the BBC; surely, a better reason by the Germans would have been that the ministry had been told by Washington that any extradition request would jeopardise American-German relations
- that would obviously be a respectable reason from the German point of view
