reflection p5

Terrorism

When terrorism incidents involve victims in one country and perpetrators in another, law enforcement officers cannot rely on the procedures they normally use to find evidence and/or apprehend domestic perpetrators.

Terrorism

On a global scale concerning terrorism, a U.S. arrest warrant or search warrant is worthless in any other country, in the same way that a French warrant has no legal effect in the United States.

Can you provide any other examples where court orders from one jurisdiction are recognized by other jurisdictions?

Terrorism

The problem of collecting evidence and apprehending perpetrators in another country is not unique to terrorism.

Criminals have historically fled areas where they committed their crime(s) in an effort to avoid being prosecuted and punished.

Terrorism

Cross-border crimes create challenges for law enforcement officers.

One challenge is collecting evidence from abroad;

the other is obtaining custody of a suspect who is abroad.

Extradition Process? Rewards? Other options/recourse?

Terrorism

Investigators have two alternatives they can use to obtain evidence from abroad.

One alternative is to rely on the formal devices that have historically been used to gather evidence in transnational criminal cases. Warrants, subpoenas, “seeking information”, etc.

The other option is informal cooperation.

Terrorism

Cybercrime investigators also have two alternatives they can use to gain custody of a suspect who is in another country.

One alternative is to rely on extradition, the formal device that is used to transfer a suspect from one country to another.

The other option involves informal action by the country seeking the suspect.

Terrorism

EVIDENCE COLLECTION

As the U.S. Department of Justice states, the formal devices officers can use to obtain evidence from abroad include:

Treaty Requests, as well as a requests for assistance via Executive Agreement(s).

Diplomatic Concerns? Conflicts? Negotiation Tactics?

Terrorism

The single greatest advantage of informal cooperation is the speed with which evidence can be preserved and collected.

The single greatest disadvantage of informal cooperation is that it depends on the investigating officer knowing how to contact his counterpart in the country in which the evidence is located.

Terrorism

Informal cooperation depends to a great extent on networking among investigators.

Some investigators are very effective at this, often because they have the resources to be able to attend conferences where they meet investigators from other countries.

Many investigators are not effective at this because they simply do not have the opportunity to network with officers from other countries.

Terrorism

ARRESTING SUSPECTS:

Officers have two ways to gain custody of suspects who are in another country: Extradition, the formal device that has historically been used to transfer suspects from one country to another; and Extra-Legal, unilateral action by the country seeking the suspect.

Terrorism

ARRESTING SUSPECTS:

The truly difficult cases are the ones in which the perpetrators’ country will not or cannot extradite them and refuses to prosecute them for the crimes they committed abroad.

Victim countries may have no official recourse. The only options may be to give up on prosecuting the offenders or to resort to extra-legal action to obtain custody of them.

Terrorism