US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

[KiwiHopeful]

Watch out, Poms.

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens - Times Online

AMERICA has told Britain that it can ?kidnap? British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the ?extraordinary rendition? of terrorist suspects.
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The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

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America really does exist in some kind of parallel universe, doesn't it?

Of course, such an interpretation of the law opens up some interesting possibilities ...

AlterNet: Rumsfeld Flees France, Fearing Arrest

[selchie]

If only they had nabbed Rummy before he crossed the border. That would have been poetic justice!

[KiwiHopeful]

Poetic justice would have been to arrest him, then hand him over to the CIA to be shipped to Syria for 'questioning' then on to Guantanamo to be held until the Global War on Terror (tm) is over ... or is it the Global Struggle against Extremism (tm) this week? I forget. Where is Winston Smith when you need him?

[Taffy]

Don't they spot the problem with their statement:

It's perfectly legal in the US for us to kidnap British citizens.

That's all well and good in the US, although a little wierd. Haven't they considered that while they are in the UK kidnapping who ever they choose, they are violating British law?

When the old fella Nostradamus predicited that the people responsible for the end of the world as we know it would would come from the East, what I think he meant was on a world map, anyone east of America would get fed up of this kind of crap and wipe the place out!

Why is it that the so called civilized countries are the most shameful ones to be part of? If you're British, you're embarrased by the behavior of the infamous 'football fans abroad', and to be under the US government right now is something else completely!

[KiwiHopeful]

Taffy, the current administration fully believes that there are 3 kinds of laws: 1. God's law, which must be twisted to support 2. Bush's laws (google "signing statements") and 3. all other laws, which must be ignored (including the UN, the International Criminal Court, the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions ... etc, etc, etc, etc, .....

This obviously isn't the first time this has come up, but it's pretty much ignored when the US is kidnapping brown people from Pakistan who have been captured by bounty hunters and then sent to Gitmo. Sadly, because of Blair's actions as Bush's Poodle, the British people are reaping what their government has sown.