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Comment by ebcode | Hacker News Reader

Yet non-Americans do seem to enjoy being prosecuted for breaking USA laws. Looks like the USA has unilaterally decided that it is now the One World Government we've all been dying for. We should also prosecute China for breaking our federal minimum wage laws.

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Extradition treaties are voluntarily agreed to by both countries. If you are British or American and don’t like the consequences of this treaty, I encourage you to contact relevant politicians and tell them to renegotiate the treaty.

I believe the right treaty is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_tr...

Reminds me of the recent U.S. diplomat’s wife that got away with murder in Britain and several other such cases(U.S murderers not being prosecuted). The extradation treaties do not work the way you think they do. They big guy always has the last say regardless of what the treaty says.

I’d argue that’s continued failure of the extradition treaty, and part of why it’s hard to craft them.

You can’t make it too easy to extradite, but you also don’t want it to be too hard.

I’m not sure what the right carve out would be to avoid extradition of journalists for comparatively trivial charges. A full blown journalistic exception seems too far, but I don’t know what the right line is instead.

>> I’d argue that’s continued failure of the extradition treaty, and part of why it’s hard to craft them.

Not really. If it were the other way around the murderer would have been in police custody regardless of its status(i.e the wife of a diplomat). It just that the small guy cherises the relationship with the big guy too much to upset it.

Agreed, the diplomatic angle is why it’s a total mess. I’m kind of surprised the US did not have her tried for manslaughter.

The US-UK extradition treaty doesn't need to be renegotiated. It just needs to be enforced. The treaty makes it very clear that Assange cannot be extradited:

> extradition shall not be granted if the competent authority of the Requested State determines that the request was politically motivated.

The only question is whether the UK government will breach the treaty in order to please its American allies.

1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/extradition-treat...

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