Introduction

Extradition treaties and related domestic legislation regulate the lawful transfer of individuals accused or convicted of criminal offences to the prosecuting jurisdiction (Bassiouni 2008; Cullen and Burgess 2015; Griffith and Harris 2005). While the physical surrender may be technically lawful under these mechanisms, there are many circumstances which raise concerns about the fairness of extradition. A lawful surrender often creates the appearance that any subsequent prosecution, conviction and sentence is fair or just. Many extradition cases address claims associated with individual rights, which can include widely accepted international human rights protections, domestic due process principles and broader individual rights. All these issues are discussed in the case studies presented in this book.

Extradition is regulated by layers of bi- or multilateral treaties (Magnuson 2012), as well as quasi-criminal domestic legislation and in some cases constitutional requirements, such as in the United States (US) (Bassiouni 2008; Nadelmann 1990). As ‘domestic legal arrangements are predicated on international legal arrangements’ (Cullen and Burgess 2015, 236), international extradition is a highly unusual area of law. At its core, extradition involves the prosecution of ‘national crimes subject to transnational criminal procedure’ to ensure the individual appears in court to exercise their right to defend charges or serve a previously imposed sentence (Boister 2015, 20). Importantly, there is no ‘positive obligation’ on any country to extradite under international law (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2012, para. 92). Extradition is also portrayed as an important form of extraterritorial power (Blakesley 1984) that reflects legal pluralism (Berman 2005; Boister 2015; Merry 1988).

Historically, extradition mainly applied to a fugitive accused of a crime in one jurisdiction who fled to another to escape prosecution or a legally imposed punishment. However, due to contemporary patterns of globalisation and technological developments such as the internet, extradition requests can now involve extraditees who, at the time of the crime, were never physically located in the nation seeking to prosecute (Allely et al. 2022; Mann et al. 2018). As nations are increasingly concerned about controlling both domestic and transnational crimes that might affect their national security (Aas 2011a, 2011b; Andreas and Nadelmann 2006; Bowling 2011; Zedner 2010), extradition becomes a reflection of international comity and strong bi- and multilateral political relationships (Abelson 2009; Bassiouni 2003; Blakesley 1984; Magnuson 2012; Sheptycki 2011).