Dear Mr Obama, about that extradition treaty

There is news that 13 mem­ber of the infa­mous US state ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tion the CIA have been con­victed in absen­tia of kid­nap­ping an Ital­ian cit­i­zen in order to ren­dite him for tor­ture by Egypt­ian prox­ies. It raises the issue of whether or not these thugs will ever see jus­tice. The Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Inter­na­tional Law thinks not. Geeklawyer dis­agrees with their view that his abduc­tion was not kid­nap because the US Supreme Court requires there to be some ben­e­fit to the CIA agents them­selves, whether or not pecu­niary. Pre­sum­ably career enhance­ment is a ben­e­fit; and pre­sum­ably a suit­ably struc­tured argu­ment could be made that a ben­e­fit to a third party, the US, would also be an enabling ben­e­fit, for kid­nap def­i­n­i­tion purposes.

In the UK, of course, none of this would mat­ter our own dear Neo-Labour would never pre­sume to ask our beloved US over­lords to extra­dite their cit­i­zens to Blighty. The con­verse, as Mck­in­non is find­ing out, is not true. Thanks to dear Brown-nosing war crim­i­nal Tony Blair, UK cit­i­zens will find them­selves extra­dited to the US for prac­ti­cally any­thing and with­out any­one hav­ing to prove there was any seri­ous alle­ga­tion at all.