The Considerable Number Of Suspected Perps That Countries Extradite Daily To Other Countries #2



[Interpol HQ is now in Central France, a new HQ is planned for outside Paris soon.

Extradition: a hardball game.

This is the latest of many posts which include this legal take explaining the gloomy prospects for Sollecito and Knox if their final conviction comes down. 

Complete refusals of extradition by any countries other than Russia and China seem increasingly rare, as that can cause a rebound effect and economic retaliation in response. The United States very rarely refuses to extradite.

If anything, the US is stepping up the pace of its extradition cases - both ways. The US at federal and state level is at any one time processing hundreds of requests, and transporting suspected perps back and forth.

These are some of the high-profile extradition cases in today’s news:

The US/Italy Robert Lady case

The twists and turns in the story of the fugitive from Italian justice and former CIA chief in Milan Robert Lady were last posted on here. He scampered out of Central America back to the United States mid-2013.

But now official Washington seems to be giving Mr Lady a very hard time which may have him voluntarily headed to Italy to seek a break.

When the anniversary of 9/11 came around this year, Robert Seldon Lady was moving between low-end hotels around Miami. An international arrest warrant keeps him from returning to his home in Panama. He says he’s flirting with personal bankruptcy, fears for his life, and is “getting pretty desperate.” His marriage is broken. He blames this hard luck on his former employer, the Central Intelligence Agency

Mr. Lady helped CIA contractors and agents snatch an Egyptian Islamist off the streets of Milan and deliver him to an interrogation cell in Cairo. This so-called extraordinary rendition””one of 130 or so carried out by the Bush administration””set in train events that soured America’s relations with Italy and upended the life and career of Mr. Lady and other CIA agents.

Saying “I’m fed up with all this,” Mr. Lady has some extraordinary steps in mind to change his fate. His actions and outspokenness are going to add to the discomfiture of his former bosses at Langley over this messy episode from the early days after 9/11.

If the muddle-headed Knox and Sollecito enablers can find any solace in that, good luck. Mr Lady was a top government employee, who claims he was doing only what he was told. 

The Brazil/Italy Henrique Pizzolato case

Believe it or not the former director of the Bank of Brazil has fled to Italy to ensure a fair trial.

Sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison for bribery, embezzlement and money laundering, Pizzolato announced in a letter that he fled to have, according to him, a new trial in Italy “removed from politics and electoral motives” and in “a court not subject to the impositions of the media”.

Brazil might ask Interpol for a “red notice” which is the highest form of international arrest warrant and often has the same wanted result as formal extradition.

A red notice chills renegades’ possibilities worldwide.

In fact so tough is life on the lam under a red notice that perps often simply cave before too long, and head back to defend themselves or pay their dues without any court moves or official transport required.

The US/Italy Raoul Weil case

Finfacts reported on this case last month.

Raoul Weil, a former UBS wealth management chief, was arrested last weekend in Italy and faces extradition to the United States to answer charges of aiding and abetting tax evaders.

Weil left Switzerland’s biggest bank in 2009 after he was declared a fugitive from US justice by ignoring a criminal indictment issued in 2008. UBS was forced to pay a $780m fine in 2009 after admitting to actively assisting US tax evaders to break US law.

Several Swiss bankers and lawyers have since been indicted in the US for their alleged role in helping wealthy US citizens hide their assets from the tax authorities.

Weil is one of the most high-profile of the accused as a then head of UBS’s wealth management and he is now a temporary resident of an Italian prison, likely fearing a longer spell in a US one.

A Florida court indictment charged Weil with having a prominent role in aiding UBS’s US clients to hide around $20bn in undeclared assets between 2002 and 2007.

He however has strongly denied the allegation but would not risk defending himself in a US court.

Italy is giving Mr Weil a pretty hard time and accedes to all American extradition requests except where the death sentence might be involved.

The US/Russia gangsters case

The US is trying hard to get some Russian gangsters (okay, alleged gangsters) extradited from countries around the world  and Russia is resisting this “extraterritorial application of America law”.

U.S. organized crime experts say Russian criminals working overseas often have connections within the Russian government, and that the Russian government’s defense of them is designed to keep those links from emerging in public light….

In the past six months, Russians have been a frequent target of arrest warrants executed at the request of U.S. prosecutors.

On Aug. 1, the Dominican Republic extradited 24-year-old Aleksandr Panin to stand trial in federal court in Atlanta on charges related to cyberscams using SpyEye malware, which enables the theft of online banking information. Panin is accused of stealing $5 million from U.S. banks.

In mid-August, Lithuania extradited an alleged arms dealer, Dmitry Ustinov, to stand trial in the United States for allegedly negotiating to sell restricted night-vision goggles. He faces a 20-year sentence.

Another Russian, Dmitry Belorossov, was arrested at the Barcelona airport Aug. 17 upon triggering an Interpol fraud alert. Belorossov’s extradition to stand trial in the United States is pending.

When U.S. prosecutors seized Liberty Reserve in late May, they said the company had laundered “more than $6 billion in criminal proceeds.” Liberty Reserve allowed clients anonymity and offered them a digital currency, known as an LR, to facilitate payments for criminal activity.


The US/Spain Javier Martin-Artajo case

Banker Javier Martin-Artajo now in Spain is refusing to be extradited to the United states - because the crime he is accused of took place in England. Good luck with that one. JP Morgan Chase Bank has just paid a huge fine in the US so THEY accept the crime took place there.


Comments

Our post promised on Greg Hampikian and Boise State University should be up soon; we are waiting for some additional information to arrive.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/20/13 at 06:01 PM | #

But all the examples (except Robert Lady) you have quoted relate to economic offenses and the US is not going to extradite any US national for similar crimes. I am quite sure about this.

I have full sympathy for Sheldon Lady and CIA will take care (and has taken care) as long as you are in their pay. I did not know he is retired now.

We call this the American way.

Posted by chami on 11/20/13 at 06:36 PM | #

Hi Chami

True, these right now are mostly economic, but there are examples of murder cases too, many involving drugs. No line seems to be habitually drawn over extradition for murder, and odds for extradition are usually high.

http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/court-hears-details-of-glen-race-s-mental-state-before-murders-1.1526938
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=43340&icid=4&d_str=

We dont know Robert Lady’s full situation. However the leadership of the CIA under George Bush (which engineered many renditions) is not the leadership now (which has renounced renditions - but not yet killer drones).

And even back when the entire CIA group, not just Robert Lady, was on trial, the State Department didnt want to help them out. It seemed pretty ticked. One operative even sued for retroactive diplomatic immunity, but was refused.

Re RS and AK State should have created a paper trail showing the Italians did something wrong, if they did, as any judge considering extradition will want that. But as the post below this one says, no such paper trail exists.

My guess all along though has been that it wont come down to this. RS is already there, and I’d not be entirely surprised if Knox turns up to make her pitch.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/20/13 at 06:53 PM | #

PS We continue to be told that nothing will help them in the judges’ eyes more than voluntarily turning up and coming clean.

Given the brutal and protracted nature of the attack on Meredith, on that they may never spell out their role - though both Guede and Sollecito seem to resent Knox. 

Penitence, some real kindness to the family, would seem a bit more important than who did what and when; though both would be ideal.

RS failed at this two weeks ago, and left the lead judge hoping for more. This could make a difference in any sentence of, at a guess, a dozen years.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/20/13 at 07:24 PM | #

There is a generally held belief that 1 American= 100 non-american when it comes to value life.

Of course most of the Americans are of European stock, but they value other’s life too less.

I think Amanda did not even expect that she will be investigated. Far less that she will be arrested! But strange things do happen. She really took Italy as a third world country.

On the other hand, she is not a habitual killer. It took her months to come to reality but nothing ever happened as per her calculations.

PR is not for the Italians, it is targeted at the Americans to build up a case against her possible extradition. However, if it can buy justice (?) that is an extra bonus!

PR was focussed in the early days on buying support. Today it is focussed on the domestic front.

But it is common belief that nobody can predict what is going to come out of the foggy bottom.

And that is good for the next elections.

Posted by chami on 11/20/13 at 08:49 PM | #

@Peter

As we get nearer to resolution of the appeal,  general nervousness is bound to increase that the perps will get away with it. We know they did it, as does everyone with any sense, but they’ve got away with it once (for a while) and we know from last time that their defence teams and PR machine will stop at nothing…

The 6 female lay judges bother me. They did look rather too taken with knife-boy’s Oscar-winning performance, can they consciously over-ride any maternal/unconditional-love reflexes that might be lurking and sub-consciously prompting them to an inappropriate verdict - and can Nencini and his female co-judge be firm in keeping them focused on the evidence and the facts?

Actually what is the logic in having a predominantly female panel of lay judges, or is that just the way it has worked out by random selection in this instance? (I’m sure “thoughtful” on PMF.org, who unlike me is an unretired - and female - mathemetician/statistician will confirm that the probability of there being 6 or more female lay judges on a panel of 8 if selection were by chance alone is 33.3%, so not too unlikely.)

Still, there’s bound to be a difference in the way that male and female lay judges interpret the evidence (and view Sollecito’s nauseating display) - that’s the way it should be. In which case deliberately balanced panels of lay judges (i.e. not selected by chance) would surely be more likely to return the right verdicts in the long-run of cases.

On the other hand I could be getting too nervous myself and totally misreading the female lay judges’ reactions to RS. I hope so.

Posted by Odysseus on 11/20/13 at 09:35 PM | #

Hi Odysseus

1) Sollecito was not very effective in court and sounded vain and narcissistic and uncaring. Yummi was in court and generally speaks with a lot of others and didnt get any impression that he gained ground.

Plus Sollecito dropped Knox in it even further with the use of some code words which implied “we Italians need to stick together”. 

2) Women dont robotically get won over by Sollecito’s supposed charm. Katie Couric is a good case in point: at the end of the interview on ABC, she seethed disgust.

Also take Knox. It is clear she was already breaking away from Sollecito less than one week after they first met. And otherwise his list of girlfriends hasnt exactly been long.

3) As to: should we feel nervous? I dont see why. Our watchers in Italy believe a “not guilty” verdict is out of the question without transgressing Cassation’s guidelines. And Judge Nencino will not allow that. The only further investigations went the prosecution’s way.

The defense counsel and several of the PR honchos like Sforza already face trials. I do believe the only game in town now is: do they get sentenced to the max, or do they get some years lopped off.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/21/13 at 12:35 AM | #

Thanks Peter, very helpful - I feel better already!

I do agree but every now and then the fear crops up   that the little toe-rags will get away with it.

I’m sure you’re right that any such outcome would have to be a major transgression of Cassation’s guidelines.

Posted by Odysseus on 11/21/13 at 12:51 AM | #

@Odysseus

The probability that there will be 6 or more females in a random selection of 8 persons is about 14%, assuming that selection of any female is with a probability of 1/2 and there is no bias.

However, in this case we know that there are 6 females. So the real question is ‘what is the probability of getting six females in a random selection of 8 people’ and the answer for this is about 11%- still not small enough.

But some females can be tougher than men! Believe me.

And they can be more unpredictable, too!

Posted by chami on 11/21/13 at 04:04 AM | #

Hi Chami

We might have to call in thoughtful here! Assuming a random selection of 8 people there are nine possible outcomes as regards gender mix, i.e 0 females, 1 female etc., through to 8 females. Each outcome is equally probable if each individual is randomly selected from an effectively infinite population (more or less!) therefore the outcomes we are interested in ( of 6, 7 and 8 females) would be one third of the nine equally possible outcomes, and the probability is 3/9 i.e. 33.3%

I wasn’t particularly interested in the likelihood of the single outcome of 6 females (as in this panel), more the likelihood of there being as many, or more,  females in a random selection (i.e. as female-centric a panel or more so). Though I agree that 6 females is one of the nine possible outcomes, so the probability of that alone is 1/9 = 11.1%

“Females can be tougher than men”. Have to agree with that. It’s just that they sometimes don’t look it, e.g, when looking at knife-boy. Something else may well be going on inside though - this can sometimes confuse simple men!

Posted by Odysseus on 11/21/13 at 01:07 PM | #

Given the sensationalism of this case and its world wide coverage and considering that juries are not sequestered in Italy. Does this mean that this jury or any jury for that matter, gender aside, is not familiar with the case? My contention therefore is that I believe these jurors have already made up their minds and in that regard the Amanda bunch have shot themselves in the foot.

Posted by Grahame Rhodes on 11/21/13 at 04:21 PM | #

Hi Odysseus and Grahame

The jurors would have done weeks if not months of work reading all the evidence and all the sentencing reports.  Judge Nencini would have insisted on that - Hellmann seems to have dissuaded jurors from that.

At the same time Judge Nencini may not permit the discussion of the judges panel to wander. He may keep it very tightly focussed. He is perhaps the last judge in Italy looking to be made to look foolish by Cassation.

Hellmann’s punishment for not going this route has actually been terrible - he is the most shamed judge in Italy in many years, and he comes from a rich proud family up north who will be looked down on.

And he may still be prosecuted.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 11/21/13 at 04:52 PM | #

@Odysseus

I see that you are weak in maths! Never mind. It follows a Bionomial distribution and is a case of Bernoulli trials or sequence.

I did not notice that someone claiming to be a mathematician or statistician did this mistake. Mistakes are common (but not for a mathematician or a statistician for this almost trivial problem). In this case the mistake is “Each outcome is equally probable”. This is a case of selection.

The probability of all men or all women in a 8 member team is 0.39% - very small and will be alarming.

to give a concrete example, consider a team of 3: (each of these are equally probable)

mmm
mmf
mfm
fmm
mff
fmf
ffm
fff

probability of 0 m (or f) 1/8
probability of 1 m (or f) 3/8
probability of 2 m (or f) 3/8
probability of 3 m (or f) 1/8

There are several sites on the net that can explain these concepts better than me.

This is the similar analysis in the sense we can calculate that a random skin part landed on a particular area in the bra clasp- but that will be Possion distribution in general.

What I have said earlier and I still believe that Sollecito Jr did not argue about the evidences: he appealed to heart, suffering and basic human qualities that have nothing to do with the trial but work at a subconcious level.

He will do that once again sometime later, I think.

Posted by chami on 11/21/13 at 06:32 PM | #

Chami

With respect, I think you’re unnecessarily concerned with sequence -  certainly the Binomial distribution is applicable in that case, but not here I think where I’m just looking at the likelihood of obtaining 6 or more females in the final panel, the order of selection being immaterial for my purpose.

In your own illustration, the probability of 2 or more men in a 3 member team is 50% (3/8 +1/8).
We agree here - this is the same as calculating that with a 3-member team there are 4 possible outcomes i.e. 0 males, 1 male, 2 males, 3 males. Each is equally probable, so the prob. of >=2 males is 2/4, or 50%. Same result.

There is exactly the same calculation to be made in the case of 8 people:  there are 9 possible outcomes as regards gender - 0 females up to 8 females. Each is equally likely so the prob. of >=6 females is 3/9, or 33.3%

However, by the same token, your figure for the probability of all men OR all women on an eight member randomly selected team is not as low as 0.39% (i.e exceedingly remote chance) but 1/9+1/9 = 2/9 =22.2%, very much more likely to happen, as you’d intuitively expect.

Anyway, I’m happy to agree to disagree on this one. I’m sure it’s boring non-statisticians to death -:)

Posted by Odysseus on 11/21/13 at 08:56 PM | #

@Odysseus

This is actually very simple but sometimes appear confusing to laypersons.

One of the famous french mathematicians, D’Alembert, used to make mistakes (often!) in similar calculations. But that was more than 250 years back!

We often joke, when someone makes a simple mistake, that he is imitating D’Alembert!

If you have two children, the p(both boys)=1/4; p(both girls)=1/4; and p(1b1g)=1/2. Not 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3.

Anyway, I do not have time but you can consult someone who knows.

Posted by chami on 11/21/13 at 09:33 PM | #

The thing to take from the examples in this post is the fact that none of the accused wanted to be tried in the USA.

Food for thought for Knox fans.  Have they ever considered this, I wonder?

This week much has been made in the news of the case of the white supremacist in Missouri who appealed for a stay of execution on the grounds that the drugs to be used were as yet untested and could constitute ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ (IIRC). 

This opened up further information about US States secretly approaching pharmacists to concoct drugs for executions because the European drug companies are increasingly reluctant to export drugs developed to help people if they are to be used in executions.

The ethics of such practices are highly questionable but the Knox fanatics run the Italian judicial system down as ‘mediaeval’ compared with the USA! 

I won’t express my true opinion on this forum - it is not very pretty.

Posted by thundering on 11/22/13 at 10:46 AM | #

Re the six female jurors:

I don’t think their role is quite the same as that of a juror in the UK or US court system….....?  Don’t they have less power and it is the lead judges who do most of the work?

Posted by thundering on 11/22/13 at 10:49 AM | #

There was speculation earlier that some female jurors seemed to be swayed by RS’s plea. Maybe, but I think the professional judges will be reminding them that in the appeals phase, the established facts must be respected, and so too must the motivations report by the Supreme Court.

Posted by Ergon on 11/22/13 at 04:03 PM | #

@ergon

“Maybe, but I think the professional judges will be reminding them that in the appeals phase…”

But it does not work that way. An emotional appeal goes directly to your heart (or, do you call it the brain) and it stays there free from your concious control.

It cannot be wiped away by giving instructions. Perhaps partly, but certainly it works differently.

I predict RS will make another appeal sometime before the judgment is delivered. This too will be directed towards the heart and compassion and will be partly effective in my opinion.

And I cannot even understand Italian!

Let us wait and see.

Posted by chami on 11/22/13 at 06:04 PM | #

@chami
This illustrates the value of Psychology, where we learn to listen to our subconscious and to discern when our feelings are being affected in this way.
The gradual integration of our conscious and subconscious minds does mean that the consciousness, with its reasoning, can exert some control and influence on the subconscious impulses.
One might submit that this is the whole point of it, so that higher reasoning is not blown to the winds at these really crucial times when we need it most.

Hence I still believe that it has been of value to observe such psychology and attitudes that we can ,coming from AK and RS, precisely in order to see more clearly any attempt at manipulative gestures.

Posted by SeekingUnderstanding on 11/22/13 at 07:49 PM | #

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