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From mcurtis@inetport.com Sun Jan 26 16:19:07 PST 1997
Article: 94682 of alt.revisionism
From: mcurtis@inetport.com (Mike Curtis)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Blackmore's obtuse Postings
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 15:37:05 GMT
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rblackmore@juno.com wrote:

It is good to see that the title of my thread is still apt. :-)

>Comment:  Your comment amazes me.  These people were german nationals.  This has
>nothing to do with race.  Of course, you also would have no objection to the fact that
>Eichmann was abducted and "tried" in Israel, a country which did not even exist at the
>time his alleged crimes were committed.

I don't expect Mr. Bellinger to read this at all. I do expect him to
whine and complain that it is too long for him. The points he repeated
brings up about the Eichmann case involved a question that concerns
the courts and international treaties. So it is not easy to be both
instructive and short. This is a point that has interested me. It
brings in two concerns. The first is the method in which Eichmann
found himself in the jurisdiction of an Israeli court. That same claim
was made by Eichmann's defense, Dr. Servatius. I'll use the book _The
Capture and Trial of Adolf Eichmann_, by Moshe Pearlman, Simon and
Schuster, 1963, page 109-117 passim:

The prosecution said that the State would use the rules that other
states use. So they cited vol 109 of the *English Reports . . . *
There was the *Ex Parte* Scott case of 1829 which involved illegal
apprehension and contained a judgement by Lord Chief Justice, Lord
Tenterden. The case was about Susanna Scott, a perjurist, who fled to
Brussels where she was kidnapped and brought back to Britian. Lord
Tenterden held that "the court will not inquire into the manner in
which capture was effected." For "the question . . . is this: whether,
if a person charged with a crime is found in this country, it is the
duty of the court to take care that such a party shall be amenable to
justice, or whether we are to consider the circumstances under which
he was brought here. I thought, and still continue to think, that we
cannot inquire into them."

Another case in 1949 "concerned a private soldier in the R.A.S.C. who
had been given a compassionate leave for two months." But he went AWOL
and fled England for Belgium. For two years he evaded the authorities.
Then he was spotted by British officers in Antwerp who took him
against his will to an army camp in Germany and from there to England
for couts-martial. The court held that "the circumstances in which the
applicant may have been arrested in Belgium are of no concern of this
country. If a person is arrested abroad and is brought before a court
in this country charged with an offence which this court  has
jurisdiction to hear, the court has no power to go into the question .
. . of the circumstances in which he may have been brought here, but
the court has jurisdiction to try him for the offence in question,
and, therefore, in the present case, the court-martial has
jurisdiction to deal with the applicant, and the High Court will not
interfere."

Another British case taken in mandated Palestine from 1942 was cited,
six years before the proclamation of Israeli statehood. The man
questioning his arrest had escaped to "Demascus, in Syria, and a
British sergeant had arrested him there and brought him, against his
will, back to Palestine to face trial. The court found:

"Where a fugitive is brought back by kidnapping or by other irregular
means, and not under extradition treaty, he cannot, although an
extradition treaty exists between the two countries, set up in answer
to the indictment the unlawful manner in which he was brought within
the jurisdiction of the court. It belongs exclusively to the
government from whose territory he was wrongfully taken to complain of
the violation of its rights."

So this makes it clear where the injury lay. It is to the country
whose sovereignty was violated and NOT to the person abducted.
Argentina and Israel and reached their amicable agreement over this
matter and things were considered settled. But Bellinger might claim
that this is only one country. What of the United States?

A case was taken from the American *Corpus Juris Secundum (volume 222,
Criminal Law, Clause 144, page 236 where the Attorney General finds:

"Custody of the accused by the court, or his presence therein on a
proper charge, is essential to the jurisdiction of the court over him.
The manner in which the accused is brought before the court, however,
is ordinarily immaterial insofar as jurisdiction over him is
concerned."

Clause 146 on page 242 adds:

"In accordance with the general rule stated in Clause 144 *supra*, to
the effect that a court will not enquire into the manner in which the
accused is brought before it, the fact that the accused has been
illegally arrested, or that he has by trickery, force, or without
legal authority, or by any illegal means, been brought within the
territorial jurisdiction of a state or federal court, does not affect
the jurisdiction of the court. Even if in any case there should be a
conflict of jurisdiction between two courts, the accused who is before
a court for trial, cannot take advantage of the fact that his presence
has been illegally or improperly obtained."

There are a raft of US cases: 

1. 1906 Pettibone v. Nichols
2. 1950 Hatfield v. Warden of the State Prison of Southern Michigan
3. 1886 Ker v. People of the State of Illinois

An interesting case of 1897 where the accused charged with rape in the
"Southern District of the Indian Territory" fled and was kidnapped,
brought back, tried and sentenced to death. This rapist applied to the
Supreme Court of the United States who held that "a forcible abduction
is no sufficient reason why a Party should not answer when brought
within the jurisdiction of the court which has the right to try him
for such an offense. The law will not permit a person to be kidnapped
or decoyed within the jurisdiction for the purpose of being compelled
to answer to a mere private claim, but in criminal cases the interests
of the public override that which is, after all, a mere privilege from
arrest."

The last one I'll do here before I move on to the next matter that
Bellinger brings forth is a case that involved the kidnapping of
financier Samual Insull which concerned the U.S., Greece, and Turkey.
The Eichmann case, it must be remembered involved Israel and
Argentina. Samual Insull was wanted in the United States on charges of
fraud and he had escaped the country to avoid arrest. He was
eventually forcibly seized from a Greek vessel in the Bosphorus by
Turkish police and tossed into a Turkish prison. Later he was
delivered over to the United States through the hands of an agent
representing the United States government. Of course, Insull
complained. The court said that it was "not deprived of jurisdiction,
even if the offence was not within any extradition treaty between
Greece or Turkey and the United States, and court has no power to
inquire into such alleged facts."

"If the rights of the defendant have been violated, or the peace or
dignity of the Hellenic Republic or Turkey trespassed upon, that is
not a matter for this court. . . . That is a matter which rests
between the defendant and the parties abducting him, or between the
political powers of the governments of Turkey or the Hellenic Republic
and that of the United States. . . . If either the Hellenic Republic
or Turkey, by a proper complaint, sought to vindicate its laws by
protesting against the kidnapping of this defendant within its
territory, it is reasonable to assume that the United States would
enter into such negotiations with those countries as would secure
justice for all parties concerned."

As was pointed out above, such an agreement was reached between Israel
and Argentina. 

Now for this concern that Eichmann was:
>"tried" in Israel, a country which did not even exist at the
>time his alleged crimes were committed.

I'll switch sources and move to _Prosecuting Nazi War Criminals_ by
Alan S. Rosenbaum, Westview Press, Oxford, 1993, pp. 89-90.

"To legally discharge their responsibility under international law,
'the courts of all nations would be deemed to have jurisdiction over
the offense' of genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. This
is called the 'universality principle of jurisdiction.' It states that
'some crimes are universally recognized as so opprobrious that any
state that captures the perpetrator is entitled to try and punish the
criminal on behalf of all nations of the world.' . . . Israel based
its jurisdiction on the 'universal character of the crimes in question
and their specific character as intended to exterminate the Jewish
people.' Israel roots its explanation in the 'precedent of the
universal jurisdiction over piracy,' the analogy of piracy to Nazi
atrocities (despite obvious differences), and the application of the
'universality' principle in prior war crimes trials. The 'very special
tragic link between the Nazi crimes' and 'the establishment of the
State [of Israel],' the fact that Israel is 'the State of the Jews'
and as well 'the sovereign State of the Jewish people' are also
considerations that allow Israel to circumvent the anticipated charge
that . . . Eichmann . . . threatened Israel's security, nor were their
victims Israelis."


Mike Curtis 
E-mail mcurtis@inetport.com
Nizkor Web: http://www.nizkor.org/



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