Nos spécialistes de la légalité internationale à la manœuvre: The U.S. Can Get Julian Assange - Avoid extradition and use secret services to airlift him to stand trial in America.
▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-can-get-julian-assange-1495403122
Julian Assange is all smiles after Sweden dropped its rape charge against him. He may be hoping to make it to Ecuador, which is unlikely to extradite him to America. Then again, we could always seize him and spirit him here to face justice. We wouldn’t have to resort to the extradition process. The Supreme Court might even prefer it that way.
Take it from the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote the opinion in U.S. v. Alvarez-Machain (1992). It suggests that if America has a hand in kidnapping a culprit from foreign shores to bring him to justice here, the Supreme Court is not going to be too particular.
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Which brings us to Mr. Assange. If his plan is to slink to Ecuador and if the U.S. really wants him, it might do better by avoiding extradition and turning to our secret services to airlift him to stand trial in America.
Even if America kidnaps him, that might not be the end of the story. Witness the denouement of the saga of Dr. Alvarez-Machain, who was put on trial in the same district court that shrank from trying him originally. The judge acquitted him before the case went to the jury. Dr. Alvarez-Machain then sued America and the Mexicans who’d kidnapped him in league with the DEA. That case, too, went to the Supreme Court, where in 2004 Dr. Alvarez-Machain lost unanimously.
It’s not clear the U.S. wants to put Mr. Assange on trial. If it does, though, the moral of Alvarez-Machain is that it doesn’t have to be squeamish about how it gets him here, even if he’s hiding south of the border.