I'm Giancarlo Enrico S. Pozon, a Wushu instructor, investor and Barrister... That's right, Barrister; I graduated from law school and took the Bar Exams, now I'm waiting for the results. I created this blog to make Philippine Law easy to understand for the average person. It's all about free legal advice. There are many law blogs. But the problem is that many of them are written for lawyers and law students. They use words that can't be understood by ordinary people.
Many lawyers, judges and law students consider themselves as superior to most human beings because of their knowledge of the law. It bothers me since the law is supposed to serve society. Since the law is meant to serve society as a whole, it is important that is must be understood by everybody.
This does not mean that we should all become lawyers. It means that although law is a highly specialized profession, the first duty of everybody in this profession is to make the law understandable to all; that's why all these articles are free legal advice.
Like I said, this blog is about law -but it's for the ordinary people, not the lawyers. It's for the ordinary folk so they will know what is good and bad for them, and that making them aware of the law will help us all improve society as a whole. This is free legal advice for everybody!
This post must be taken together with citizenship and treatment of aliens.
Extradition is the surrender of a person by one state to another where he faces prosecution or punishment (if he's already convicted.) This is not the same as deportation. Deportation is a unilateral act; made by the state on its own interests and in it, an undesirable alien is not necessarily sent back to his home state. Extradition is a bilateral act; the state where the wanted individual is to be tried/punished requests the state that has him in its custody.
Extradition is based on the existence of a treaty or on international comity. If there is no treaty the host state may or may not accept the wanted person.
Principles
1.) An extradition is based on consent, usually through a treaty or an act of goodwill. An extradited person can only be tried/punished for the violation he committed, the violation must be one of those agreed-upon extraditable crimes and the host state can object if the extradited person is treated in violation to the agreement (principle of specialty.) Note: offenses punishable by at least 1 year in both states are included among extraditable offenses (non-list types.)
2.) Any person, whether he is a national of the host state, the requesting state or another state, may be extradited.
3.) Political and religious offenders are not subject to extradition -generally. For such to happen, there must be at least 2 parties in the requesting state and host state that want to impose the government of their own preference on the other. The murder of a head of state or any member of his family is not considered a political offense; the same is true for genocide (attentat clause.)
4.) If there is no agreement, then the offense in question must have been committed within the territory of the requesting states or against its interests.
5.) The act in question must be punishable under the laws of both the host and requesting states.
Procedure
1.) Request is made by the requesting state, accompanied by the necessary paperwork, made through the diplomatic channels of the host state.
2.) The host state conducts a judicial investigation to determine if the crime in question is extraditable and if there is a prima facie case against the person in question under its own laws. If there is, a warrant of surrender will be issued and the person in question will be extradited to the requesting state.
The right to bail applies to extradition proceedings. To grant bail, there must be clear and convincing evidence that there is no risk that the person to be deported won't escape and he will abide by the rules and orders of the court.
Abduction from the host country isn't allowed. But if the host state's nationals helped with the abduction then the host state can't demand the return of the person who is to be extradited.
0 comments:
Post a Comment