UN criticizes Canada

GENEVA (AP) - Canada breached an international human rights treaty by sending a convicted killer back to death row in Pennsylvania, a United Nations body said Thursday.

The UN Human Rights Committee said Canadian authorities were wrong to deport Roger Judge in 1998 after he had served a separate 10-year term in Quebec for crimes committed in Canada. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, "for countries that have abolished the death penalty, there is an obligation not to expose a person to the real risk of its application," the committee said in a ruling published Thursday. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1972.

"By deporting (Judge) to the United States where he was under sentence of death, Canada established the crucial link in the causal chain that would make possible (his) execution," said the committee.

It said Canada failed to demand guarantees from U.S. authorities that Judge, an American citizen, would not be executed, and also broke the rules by sending him to the United States before he had time to lodge a final appeal against his expulsion.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/20...176203-ap.html

[ 09-04-2003, 05:59 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

<font color=cadetblue>Canada should have tried to get a guarantee that he wouldn't be executed before they kicked him out...</font>

<font color="orange">Nonsense. We extradite criminals to countries we have extradition treaties. We have no say in how they run their business. Nor should we. If they're Canadian citizens then our government should represent them as best able, but our role is not to tell others how to conduct their justice. If we really have such a problem with the death penalty, we should either not sign extradition treaties with countries that have it, or we should stipulate in the extradition treaties that no one extradited face the death penalty. Otherwise, we get rid of criminals, and they're not our problem after we extradite them.

And perhaps a better case example would be that of Charles Ng. Mountains of evidence against him, and he fought to the bitter last and almost won.</font>

<font color=orange>Very good post! One thing everyone else needs to realize is that criminals that escape this country, to avoid the death penalty, become criminals in other countries. And quite honestly, if they are facing the death penalty here, the usually aren't the people you want to live next door to!Obvoiusly, this guy that was extradited back to the states, committed other crimes in Canada or he wouldn't have been in a Canadian Jail for 10 years prior to his extradition. Do you all really want our criminals? Roman Polanski in a prime example of this. Wonder how many young girls he's slipped valium and champaigne to, so he could sodomize them, in France since he fled there to avoid the courts in this country? Not that he was going to get the death penalty here for his crime or anything.

As Britain is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights they would not hand over anyone without assurances that they would not be executed. That includes Osam bin-Laden!

That would only be applicable if OBL was found on British soil - what happens to him if the military pick him up on foreign soil is kind of a grey area that I'm sure that Blair's legal team would have no trouble interpreting in their favour.

That would only be applicable if OBL was found on British soil - what happens to him if the military pick him up on foreign soil is kind of a grey area that I'm sure that Blair's legal team would have no trouble interpreting in their favour. </font>[/QUOTE]Hoon has gone on record as saying that he wouldn't be handed over wherever he was found. Of course unofficially he could be handed over by the troops on the ground. ;)

You don't want to send the guy back? Then you keep him. When he kills someone in your country, you deal with it.

<font color=orange>It's my guess that the intelligence agencys of most of the worlds countries would work together and probably allow him to be captured by US authorities and then spirited out of their country before word got out. I doubt very seriously that anybody will intervine in his capture by US authorities.

I like True_Moose's response. ALong the same vein, let me ask:

If possession of 29g of pot in the US (Chicago being the e.g.) is a misdemeanor yet in some other country it is life in prison, and a US person is caught in the other country with 29g, should we (the US) not allow them to exact THEIR punishment on the basis it is an unfair law? I mean, just because it isn't how WE do it, does that equal "All Americans are only subject to US laws when on foreign soil"??????

Oh, I just saw he was a US citizen. That makes it a no-brainer, though what I said above still applies.

[ 09-06-2003, 09:54 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]