Editor, EXCUSES, EXCUSES… Myself, like many, fail to see why a country’s highest court could not extradite suspects to another country for genocide crimes, on the basis that the said country did not have laws punishing these crimes at the time of their occurrence.
Editor,
EXCUSES, EXCUSES… Myself, like many, fail to see why a country’s highest court could not extradite suspects to another country for genocide crimes, on the basis that the said country did not have laws punishing these crimes at the time of their occurrence.
The rationale being that retroactive options are not applicable here – never mind that the host country itself has (and had) laws against genocide crimes?
So (for France), it is preferable to harbour suspects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, when such crimes are severely punishable by laws on your own land, rather than extradite them to face justice, just because the country where you would have extradited them did not have "appropriate” laws in place at the time of those events?
Surely, this does not make sense, not even for those voicing this kind of argument. Excuses, excuses…indeed.
Diyana, Rwanda
Reaction to the story, "French court turns down another extradition request” (The New Times, April 11)