NCJ Number
85834
Date Published
1981
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This analysis of the political offense exception to international extradition focuses on the McMullen and Abu Eain cases in the United States and concludes that courts are moving toward the view that this exception does not encompass all terrorist acts, especially those involving innocent victims.
Abstract
Extradition historically has been an important instrument of international cooperation. The basic legal principle aut dedere aut judicare, however, does not guarantee that terrorists will always be punished because most extradition treaties contain a political offense exception. To combat this problem, the Council of Europe adopted the European Convention on the Supression of Terrorism in 1977 to depoliticize crimes such as hijacking, hostage-taking, and bombings, but failed to ameliorate the vulnerability to political exception by allowing members discretion in determining whether an offense was political in character. Because there are no generally accepted definitions of terrorism and political offense, courts have adopted an ad hoc approach to meet the needs of particular cases. In January 1979, U.S. Magistrate Woelflen held that McMullen, an accused Irish terrorist, was not extraditable to Great Britain under the political offense exception in the treaty, but noted that the Government had failed to produce evidence contradicting circumstances which made the political exception applicable. The issue arose again in August 1979 when Israel wanted a Jordanian resident of the West Bank arrested in Chicago extradited for the delayed detonation in a public marketplace in Tiberias of a bomb which killed two youths and injured others. The defense asserted the political offense exception, but the Department of State testified that the Government viewed such a crime as murder, not a political act. Magistrate Jurco ruled that the offenses charged were not political in character so as to prevent extradition under the treaty. The District Court denied an appeal, but an additional appeal from its order has been filed. Other nations are excluding terrorism from the political offense exception, as illustrated by recent decisions in Greece and France. These developments might portend the emergence of a nascent rule of international law and discourage terrorists from violent acts affecting innocent persons. The article contains 49 footnotes.