XPost: uk.media, U$ChargingStrandedU$Citizens 
  
 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 
 Hash: SHA1 
  
 Statement Against US/UK Extradition Treaty 
  
 Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit 
  
 sent by Francis A. Boyle - Jul 22, 2006 
  
  
 statement in Opposition to the Ratification of the 
 Proposed Extradition Treaty Between the United States 
 and the United Kingdom (31 March 2003) 
  
 by Professor Francis A. Boyle 
 Before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the 
 United States Senate 
  
 21 july 2006 
  
  
 The United States of America was founded by means of a Declaration of 
 Independence and a Revolutionary War fought against the British Monarchy. 
 But under the terms of this proposed Extradition Treaty, our Founding 
 Fathers and Mothers such as John Hancock, George Washington, Thomas 
 Jefferson, James and Dolly Madison would be extradited to the British 
 Monarchy for prosecution and persecution for the very revolutionary 
 activities that founded the United States of America itself. 
  
 Because of this American legacy of revolution against British Tyranny, we, 
 americans, have always been wary of efforts by foreign powers to transport 
 Americans and foreigners for prosecution abroad.  In the Declaration of 
 Independence, one of the specific complaints against British Tyranny made by 
 Thomas Jefferson was directed at the British outrage of "transporting us 
 beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences." Such is the case for this 
 Treaty! 
  
 For that reason, several episodes in the early history of our Republic, such 
 as that of Citizen Genet under Thomas Jefferson, laid the foundation for the 
 uniquely American notion of the "political offense exception" to 
 extradition.  Today, this bedrock principle of American Justice is now under 
 assault by means of this Treaty.  Although it pays lip-service to the 
 political offense exception, the Treaty effectively eliminates it for all 
 practical purposes. 
  
 The political offense exception is eliminated for any offense allegedly 
 involving violence or weapons, including any solicitation, conspiracy, or 
 attempt to commit such crimes.  As we Irish Americans have repeatedly seen 
 in Chicago, Florida, New York, and elsewhere, undercover government agents 
 infiltrate peaceful Irish American groups, suggest criminal activity to 
 them, and then falsely claim that innocent members of these groups agreed 
 with their suggestions.  That is all it takes for a conspiracy to be 
 extraditable under this Treaty.  Even worse, all it would take for any of 
 the people in this room to get extradited under this Treaty is a false 
 allegation from the British Monarchy that one of its spies overheard them 
 say something reckless about weapons or the armed struggle in Ireland. 
  
 In addition, this Treaty wipes out a number of constitutional and procedural 
 safeguards.  It eliminates any statute of limitations, eliminates the need 
 for any showing of probable cause, permits indefinite preventive detention, 
 applies retroactively to offenses allegedly committed before the Treaty's 
 ratification, eliminates the time-honored Rule of Specialty in all but name, 
 allows for the unconstitutional seizure of assets, and permits extradition 
 under Article 2(4) for conduct that is perfectly lawful in the United 
 States.  This Treaty retroactively criminalizes perfectly lawful conduct in 
 violation of the constitutional prohibition on Ex Post Facto laws set forth 
 in Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution as well as the basic 
 principle of public international law and human rights - no crime without 
 law, no punishment without law. 
  
 Most outrageously, under this Treaty, responsibility for determining whether 
 a prosecution is politically motivated is transferred from the U.S. Federal 
 Courts to the executive branch of government.  This means that instead of 
 having your day in court before a neutral Federal Judge you will be required 
 to rely on the not-so-tender mercies of the Department of State, which 
 historically has always been studently pro-British, anti-Irish, and against 
 Irish Americans and Irish America.  There are now over twenty million Irish 
 American Citizens, Voters, and Taxpayers, and we all especially like to 
 vote. 
  
 As the current U.S. Irish deportation cases show, Britain can easily return 
 Irish and British citizens to Britain.  So why is the British Monarchy now 
 trying now to shift the extradition decision from the U.S. Federal Courts to 
 the State Department?  Because you cannot deport a U.S. citizen.  A U.S. 
 citizen has to be extradited.  Article 3 of the proposed Treaty makes it 
 crystal clear that the British Monarchy wants to target Irish American 
 Citizens for persecution in Crown courts, which have a long history of 
 perpetrating legal atrocities against innocent Irish People.  That is 
 precisely why the U.S. Senate deliberately put the so-called Rule of Inquiry 
 by a U.S. Federal Judge into Article 3 of the 1986 Supplementary Extradition 
 Treaty with Britain.  This proposed Treaty eliminates the Senate's 
 well-grounded Rule of Inquiry.  This Treaty has been designed by the British 
 government to overturn and reverse the delicately crafted constitutional and 
 human rights guarantees that were deliberately built into the 1986 
 Supplementary Extradition Treaty by the U.S. Senate. 
  
 Furthermore, unlike Article VIIIbis of the proposed Extradition Protocol 
 with Israel, for some mysterious reason Article 6 of the Extradition Treaty 
 with the British Monarchy eliminates any statute of limitations 
 requirements.  So citizens of Israel get to benefit from a statute of 
 limitations, but we Irish American Citizens of the United States do not. 
 Why? 
  
 The answer becomes quite clear in Article 2(2) and Article 4(2)(g) of the 
 Extradition Treaty which renders extraditable an accessory after the fact to 
 an extraditable offense.  Since there are no statute of limitations 
 requirements and the proposed Treaty is retroactive, any Irish American 
 Citizen who provided assistance to Joe Doherty would today be extraditable 
 under this Treaty as an accessory after the fact to Mr. Doherty.  Such Irish 
 American Doherty supporters would be provisionally arrested and indefinitely 
 detained, and have their homes, businesses, cars, and other property seized, 
 sold and surrendered to the British Monarchy. 
  
 That is the real agenda behind this Extradition Treaty:  British retaliation 
 against Irish American Citizens Voters and Taxpayers because of our near 
 universal support for Joe Doherty and other I.R.A. soldiers who fled to the 
 United States seeking refuge from fighting their own revolution against 
 British Tyranny in Ireland since the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on 
 Easter Sunday 1916.  Just like America's founders did on July 4, 1776. 
  
 The British Monarchy has continued to maintain a colonial military 
 occupation regime consisting in part of about 15,000 soldiers in the six 
 northeast counties of Ireland in gross violation of the right of the Irish 
  
 [continued in next message] 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)