Re: Not Menwith
It says we must extradite if the Americans provide a warrant but that we have to present a case to get Americans extradited here.
Yeah but that's not how it works which is how Assange is still rotting in a UK prison cell. The only way they can do it with just a warrant is if it's uncontested, but that's the same the other way.
On the Sacoolas thing IMHO it's fairly clear that hubby is NSA or CIA and that's why the US is being protective. Without being declared persona non grata the only people who are fair game is who the US elects to decide are fair game. The real issue that the US aught bare in mind is what they're doing is precedential - when some young lad in the US gets mown down by a drunk British (or any other country) diplomat driving on the wrong side of the road (they'd have to be drunk because most people can tell the difference between left and right) and they claim immunity and leave the country what are they going to say to the family of the victim? Oh, well, we could have prosecuted him, but we tried to be clever in another case and it's fucked us right proper.
As for it originally being valid if her husband has immunity, which he probably does, then the convention is clear that it cross-applies to family, for fairly obvious reasons. It's an abuse of the treaties though - they exist to stop the likes of Iran and China locking people up just for the fun of it, not as a catch all we can do whatever we like which is a real risk of ending the entire diplomacy system, especially when it's a key military ally.
I'm not entirely sure I 100% disagree on the point about stopping extraditions, but it does work both ways, despite what you think and they're a massive help with things like tracking down people who skip out on paying child support and making them pay it and other such things.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
