Strange bedfellows

Under the new treaty — crafted in part by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft — the administration would have expanded powers to approve extradition to the UK of any American citizen or foreign guest. Critics claim that the proposed treaty, which could be voted on within days, also threatens fundamental due process protections that ensure that any extradition request is lawful and is not simply a pretext for punishment on account of race, religion, nationality or political opinion.
The treaty has set off a firestorm of protest from an unlikely coalition of allies: groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Irish Americans Opposed to the Extradition Treaty, and the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. All are mobilizing against it, albeit separately.
“Each time the U.S. puts a new extradition treaty together, it is used first against the Irish,” said Mike McCormack, the AOH’s national historian. “They dry run each new version against us and it’s simply not fair. “Obviously there are Anglo-centric interests at work in the administration who have pressed for this. And because of the fear of terrorism and the paranoia that has come with it, we have now reached a stage here where many people with Irish surnames are deciding to overlook this development. They have simply been suborned by narrow personal interests and by the current political climate — and I believe they are abandoning their heritage in the process. They say, ‘We’re Americans now, we’re not Irish,’ and so they’re giving this outrageous treaty a pass. They should not.”
Critics claim that the new treaty’s language is so vague that it could allow the extradition of both Irish and American citizens acting in the political pursuit of peace and justice in Northern Ireland. If passed, they warn, the proposed treaty could allow Irish Americans to be extradited because they work against the UK government’s policies in Northern Ireland — without having any ability to challenge in an American court whether the charges against them were politically motivated.
Speaking from Washington, where he is closely monitoring the proposed treaty, Charlie Mitchell, legislative council for the ACLU, said: “The treaty contains alarming court-stripping provisions that threaten the fundamental due process rights of Americans and others accused of crimes by the British government. “The previous extradition treaty between Britain and the United States, which was adopted in 1986, retained scope to protect purely political cases, and those accused of political offenses. But the new treaty would undo that. The administration wants to consolidate its power in the executive branch to determine what’s bad. If passed, all the British government will have to do to extradite an Irish citizen living here is to show probable cause that they have committed an offense. We have sent a letter to Richard G. Lugar and Joseph R. Biden — the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to protest this alarming new treaty. It vests authority to the Justice Department, and not an objective judiciary that can ensure the United States renders up terrorists and criminals, not dissidents.”
Said Bill Young, president of the New Jersey state board of the AOH: “The opinion of the Hibernians is quite clear. We consider this alarming treaty to be completely unacceptable. It subjects American citizens to extradition based solely on unproved allegations by the British government. Never before in our history has the U.S. government offered up the liberty of American citizens to the whims of the queen. This must have been a deal cut between Blair and Bush — the British must have requested it as payback for their support of the invasion of Iraq. It’s undoing all of Bill Clinton and Sen. George Mitchell’s work on the peace process.”
The current extradition treaty with the UK, adopted in 1972, was later amended by a Supplemental Treaty in 1986 that narrowed but did not remove the political offense exception. The Supplemental Treaty attempted to eliminate any judicial role for determining whether any offense was a political offense, but at the time a barrage of criticism greeted that proposal, which was seen as opening the door to wholesale harassment of Irish Americans and other critics of British government policies. Responding to the public outcry, the Senate refused to ratify it. Instead, a Supplemental Treaty was negotiated that excluded serious violent crimes from the political-offense exception while still ensuring a full judicial review.
If the new treaty is ratified, an American who opposed British policy — or, for example, an investigative journalist who wrote of police abuses in Northern Ireland for an Irish-American newspaper — could potentially face arrest and extradition without having any ability to challenge in an American court whether the criminal charges are really a pretext for punishment on account of political opinion.
The preservation of the political offense exception has a long history in the United States. Since the time of Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. government has consistently refused extradition requests for political offenses. Indeed, in the Declaration of Independence, the colonists accused King George of “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.” The ACLU is arguing that principle should apply with equal force today, no less than in 1776. No American, they contend, should be sent to face trial in a foreign country without a meaningful judicial review of all aspects relevant to extradition.
The new treaty also contains provisions that would eliminate the statute of limitations as a defense to extradition (Article 6), it would also allow for “provisional arrests” for as long as 60 days with no formal extradition request providing supporting details (Article 12), and which allow for the treaty to be applied retroactively (Article 22).
Attorney General Ashcroft announced at the signing ceremony last March that the new treaty “should serve as a model to the world” and could lead to revising other U.S. extradition treaties. As a result, Senate approval of this treaty could encourage the administration to pursue treaties with other nations that diminish due process and meaningful judicial review. According to the AOH, Ireland has become the first test case, and if the treaty is passed they warn that in the process the United States could well lose its place as a haven for the persecuted.