Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Graybeard58
America has become a haven for the world's war criminals because it lacks the laws needed to prosecute them, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday. There's been only one U.S. indictment of someone suspected of a serious human-rights abuse. Durbin said torture was the only serious human-rights violation that was a crime under American law when committed outside the United States by a non-American national.

What laws were used to deport all the Nazi concentration camp guards etc...? Lying on the application ?
3 posted on 11/14/2007 8:41:45 PM PST by stylin19a
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: stylin19a
What laws were used to deport all the Nazi concentration camp guards etc...? Lying on the application ?

Yes. Fraud in an immigration application can void citizenship and clear the way for deportation or extradition. But what Durbin and Coburn re talking about is something different, trying these cases in U.S. courts.

I'm not sure that would be constitutional -- trying someone for an act that was not a crime when an act was committed is ex post facto law, and that's expressly prohibited under the Constitution. Some Americans refused to participate in the Nuremberg tribunals due to constitutional concerns, but for most of the last half-century, the consensus has been that it's legal for the US to extradite to another country or to an international tribunal under theory. If the crime wasn't committed by an American, against an American or within American jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of US courts seems a little dubious to me.

12 posted on 11/14/2007 9:11:30 PM PST by ReignOfError
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson