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there are also minorities who are anything but law-abiding, these same individuals should be extradited to the UK.

A Statement in Opposition to the Ratification of the Proposed Extradition Treaty Between the United States and the United Kingdom (31 March 2003). Unfortunately, but predictably, his wise words were not listened to!

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
People to self-determination under international law, including Article I(1)
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which the
United States, the Republic of Ireland, and the British Monarchy are all
contracting parties. These historical facts provide proof-positive of
precisely why this Treaty with the British Monarchy must be treated
completely differently from any other extradition treaty that the United
States might have with any other country in the world. All of these other
modern extradition treaties are inapposite to this proposed Extradition
Treaty because the British Monarchy obstinately continues illegally to
occupy Ireland militarily and to maintain a colony there in blatant
violation of the United Nations' seminal Decolonization Resolution of 1960.

Finally, this Extradition Treaty with the British Monarchy must stand alone
and apart from all other modern U.S. extradition treaties precisely because
we Americans fought a bitter Revolutionary War against the British Monarchy
to found this Republic. We Americans did not fight a Revolutionary War
against any other state in the world. So it is axiomatic that this proposed
Treaty with the British Monarchy must be quite carefully distinguished from
all of our extradition treaties with every other country in the world -- and
soundly rejected! Thank you. Humanitarian aid? I'm half Irish and Catholic...and even I know that is rubbish, Half-Irish & Catholic, so what? Does that make you an expert on all things Irish or Catholic? I think not Nicky boy! It doesn't even make you half-knowledgeable in my book!
NorAid, the primary Irish-American charity supporting the families of those imprisoned without trial in the concentration camps in Northern Ireland, was a registered charity under US law and as such was closely monitored by US authorities, no prosecutions were ever made, so if I were you I'd stop trying to infer something that you have no evidence of.

you're telling a country to hang its head in shame for the actions of some psychopath 400 years ago? To reduce the British repression of the Irish to a single individual's act 400 years ago indicates to me that you know nothing about Irish history! The repression and cruelty has lasted many centuries right up to recent times, and the mere fact that so many Irish emigrated to the US, (and elsewhere), during the 1800's provides a clue as to British policy towards Ireland and its people. You knowledge of Irish history is lamentable Nicky boy, may I suggest youcontact your local college and enrol in evening classes on a catch-up course in Irish history to bring you up to speed. Just trying to be constructively helpful old chap.