Via BoingBoing: US gov't to British court: We can kidnap Brits, it's legal
My exact reaction was "Ha ha ha ha wait wtf?"
The Brit representing the US at a meeting with UK jurists stated:
He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”
I don't think it's a "no jurisdiction" issue so much as a "won't bother as he'll be over-ruled" issue. (On the other hand, Canada has gotten at least one guy back, and had the bounty hunters extradited back north to face criminal charges, so go us!)
This, however, is the undeniably hilarious money quote:
“The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared.”
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