Hacker News Reader

Huh! Interesting that the extraditing country has that sort of right. Curious if that's a right or more of a courtesy/norm?

View on HN

It makes perfect sense if you think about the opposite scenario.

US: We want you to extradite this guy for fraud.

Bahamas: No problem, he's all yours.

US: You are under arrest for murder; enjoy the electric chair.

Bahamas: Wait a minute!

Well the norm definitely makes sense, mostly because if you do that then other countries won't want to extradite folks to you. But I'm curious if that's actually a right. For example, you could imagine that you extradite the guy for fraud then find evidence that he also committed murder.

If you want to add charges you just have to re-extradite which should be no harder than the original extradition. It's not some kind of get out of jail free loophole.

Don't worry, I wasn't thinking it's some get out of jail free loophole :)

I'm not sure if the American prosecutors are legally bound to the agreed terms, but pragmatically, you want to respect the agreement for the sake of potential future extraditions. If you break the terms today, the Bahamas aren't going to go to war over that with you, but they may deny future extradition requests.

Yeah it totally makes sense. I'm wondering about the "I'm not sure if..." part of your comment though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com