- 主题发起人 WorryFree
- 发布时间 2018-12-11
引渡已经不可能成功了，谢谢床普的神助功。
Trump has just harmed his own government’s case
Published December 12, 2018
Donald Trump has just handed a gift to the Huawei executive trying to fight extradition to the United States.
Canada has been saying all along that this case isn’t about politics and the Canadian government is following the rule of law, but then Mr. Trump crashed in to say that the prosecution could be used as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China.
Yes, that’s right: U.S. prosecutors threw Canada into the middle of the mess insisting it is an important legal matter that Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou be prosecuted. The U.S. President not only threw Canada under the bus, he might have thrown the U.S. legal case out the window.
Do Mr. Trump’s comments put the extradition case against Ms. Meng in jeopardy? “Oh yes,” said Dalhousie University law professor Rob Currie, an expert in extradition law. “He has given her arguments, for sure.”
Mr. Trump has also given Chinese propagandists a gift from heaven. They’ve been saying that Canada is serving the United States in a case that’s about politics and money.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Chrystia Freeland, suggested in a sort-of diplomatic way that it might be better if the U.S. President would, you know, shut up. “It is quite obvious that it ought to be incumbent on parties seeking extradition, recognizing that Canada is a rule-of-law country, to ensure that any extradition request is about ensuring that justice is done … and is not politicized,” she said.
Obvious, maybe, but not to Mr. Trump. In retrospect, the odds were better than even that he would say something that appears to interfere with justice.
Canada should be aggrieved because government lawyers dutifully sent out the RCMP to arrest Ms. Meng at U.S. request, and now China is threatening Canada. They have locked up a Canadian foreign service officer on leave, Michael Kovrig – more or less as a pawn. Then Mr. Trump told the world Ms. Meng is just a pawn.
His comments jeopardize the U.S. legal case for extradition, at least in in theory, because Ms. Meng’s lawyers can argue it shows her prosecution in politicized.
Prof. Currie of Dalhousie said Ms. Meng’s lawyers might use those comments on two occasions in the extradition process.
When Ms. Meng appears before a judge for a committal hearing, her lawyers might argue the comments show she faces a politicized prosecution that violates her right to “fundamental justice” under Canada’s Charter of Rights.
There have been cases where Canadian judges have blocked extradition to the United States under that section; for example, when a U.S. prosecutor and judge had warned the accused they would face tougher sentences if they fought extradition.
Later, Ms. Meng’s lawyers can argue Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould should refuse to sign an order authorizing extradition, either on the grounds that the United States is pursuing her for a political offence or that she faces a politicized prosecution that is “unjust or oppressive.” The minister’s decision can be reviewed by the courts.
Prof. Currie said it is not easy to beat the Crown in an extradition case, but some of these legal issues haven’t been tested often in Canadian courts. Certainly, there has never been a case such as this.
As President, Mr. Trump has the power to appoint and fire U.S. Attorneys, so it’s not easy to make a case that federal prosecutors are legally beyond his influence. That point is hotly debated in U.S. legal circles.
So Canadian Crown attorneys will likely have to counter the notion that the prosecution is politicized by arguing Mr. Trump is just talking – essentially that he is a bloviating grandstander who says many things that have nothing to do with reality.
“They’re going to have to stand up and defame the President of the United States in a Canadian court,” Prof. Currie said. “That’s a tough position for a Canadian government lawyer to be in.” But then, the blame lies with Mr. Trump.
川普确实是个白痴。
也许这是床铺的一个高招儿呢。
孟的抓捕这事儿从开始俺奏判断不是床铺所计划和主导。至今俺也莫看到有证据可以否定这以判断。（洛杉矶有个华文媒体报道说是床铺发出鸟特别行政令，捉拿孟女，还信誓旦旦地说这是据纽时报道，俺去纽时查鸟一下，根本找不到纽时有这种说法。假新闻吸引眼球，真恶心。）
事情既然发生鸟，辣床铺必然要应对。他的目标，依然是要谈判成功，而且他赶脚他正在成功，这是他同意继续谈的理由。他需要向习帝表达诚意，一个具体的方法奏是救援孟女，表明这不是他的阴毛。如果他需要动用总统权力，干预司法，他会的，蛋是可能他都不必，因为他只要做出想要干预司法的样子，奏足以给加方法院以足够的理由，驳回米方的引渡请求乐。
事后，床铺可以跟习帝说，肿么样，哥们儿，好朋友不只是说说而已吧？俺小指头都莫动，奏把孟女救出来鸟。让媒体骂去，他们神马把柄都抓不到。
最后编辑: 2018-12-13
The U.S., not China, is the real threat to international rule of law
Published 1 day ago
Jeffrey D. Sachs is an American economist and the director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development.
If, as Mark Twain reputedly said, history often rhymes, our era increasingly recalls the period preceding 1914. And as with Europe’s great powers back then, the United States, led by an administration intent on asserting America’s dominance over China, is pushing the world toward disaster.
The context of the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou – a dangerous move by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in its intensifying conflict with China – matters enormously. The United States requested that Canada arrest Ms. Meng in the Vancouver airport en route to Mexico from Hong Kong, and then extradite her to the United States. Such a move is almost a U.S. declaration of war on China’s business community. Nearly unprecedented, it puts American business people travelling abroad at much greater risk of such actions by other countries.
The United States rarely arrests senior business people, U.S. or foreign, for alleged crimes committed by their companies. Corporate managers are usually arrested for their alleged personal crimes (such as embezzlement, bribery or violence) rather than their company’s alleged malfeasance. Yes, corporate managers should be held to account for their company’s malfeasance, up to and including criminal charges, but to start this practice with a leading Chinese business person – rather than the dozens of culpable U.S. CEOs and CFOs – is a stunning provocation to the Chinese government, business community and public.
Ms. Meng is charged with violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Yet, consider her arrest in the context of the large number of companies, U.S. and non-U.S., that have violated America’s sanctions against Iran and other countries. In 2011, for example, JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.
And JP Morgan Chase was hardly alone in violating U.S. sanctions. Since 2010, the following major financial institutions paid fines for such violations: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered and Wells Fargo.
None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanction-busting banks were arrested and taken into custody for these violations. In all of these cases, the corporation – rather than an individual manager – was held accountable. Nor were they held accountable for the pervasive lawbreaking in the lead-up to or aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, for which the banks paid a staggering US$243 billion in fines, according to a recent tally. In light of this record, Ms. Meng’s arrest is a shocking break with practice. Yes, hold CEOs and CFOs accountable – but start at home in order to avoid hypocrisy, self-interest disguised as high principle and the risk of inciting a new global conflict.
Quite transparently, the U.S. action against Ms. Meng really seems to be part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to undermine China’s economy by imposing tariffs, closing Western markets to Chinese high-technology exports and blocking Chinese purchases of U.S. and European technology companies. One can say, without exaggeration, that this is part of an economic war on China – and a reckless one at that.
Huawei is one of China’s most important technology companies and therefore a prime target in the Trump administration’s effort to slow or stop China’s advance into several high-technology sectors. America’s motivations in this economic war are partly commercial – to protect and favour laggard U.S. companies – and partly geopolitical. They certainly have nothing to do with upholding the international rule of law.
The U.S. appears to be trying to target Huawei especially because of the company’s success in marketing cutting-edge 5G technologies globally. The U.S. claims the company poses a specific security risk through hidden surveillance capabilities in its hardware and software. Yet the U.S. government has provided no evidence for this claim.
A recent diatribe against Huawei in the Financial Times is revealing in this regard. After conceding that “you cannot have concrete proof of interference in ICT, unless you are lucky enough to find the needle in the haystack,” the author simply asserts that “you don’t take the risk of putting your security in the hands of a potential adversary.” In other words: While we can’t really point to misbehavior by Huawei, we should blacklist the company nonetheless.
When global trade rules obstruct Mr. Trump’s gangster tactics, then the rules have to go, according to him. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted as much last week in Brussels: “Our administration,” he said, is “lawfully exiting or renegotiating outdated or harmful treaties, trade agreements, and other international arrangements that don’t serve our sovereign interests, or the interests of our allies.” Yet before it exits these agreements, the administration is trashing them through reckless and unilateral actions.
The unprecedented arrest of Ms. Meng is even more provocative because it is based on U.S. extra-territorial sanctions – that is, the claim by the U.S. that it can order other countries to stop trading with third parties such as Cuba or Iran. The U.S. would certainly not tolerate China or any other country telling American companies with whom they can or cannot trade.
Sanctions regarding non-national parties (such as U.S. sanctions on a Chinese business) should not be enforced by one country alone, but according to agreements reached within the United Nations Security Council. In that regard, UN Security Council Resolution 2231 calls on all countries to drop sanctions on Iran as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Yet the United States. – and only the United States – now rejects the Security Council’s role in such matters. The Trump administration, not Huawei or China, is today’s greatest threat to the international rule of law, and therefore to global peace.
Published 1 day ago
Jeffrey D. Sachs is an American economist and the director of Columbia University’s Center for Sustainable Development.
If, as Mark Twain reputedly said, history often rhymes, our era increasingly recalls the period preceding 1914. And as with Europe’s great powers back then, the United States, led by an administration intent on asserting America’s dominance over China, is pushing the world toward disaster.
The context of the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou – a dangerous move by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in its intensifying conflict with China – matters enormously. The United States requested that Canada arrest Ms. Meng in the Vancouver airport en route to Mexico from Hong Kong, and then extradite her to the United States. Such a move is almost a U.S. declaration of war on China’s business community. Nearly unprecedented, it puts American business people travelling abroad at much greater risk of such actions by other countries.
The United States rarely arrests senior business people, U.S. or foreign, for alleged crimes committed by their companies. Corporate managers are usually arrested for their alleged personal crimes (such as embezzlement, bribery or violence) rather than their company’s alleged malfeasance. Yes, corporate managers should be held to account for their company’s malfeasance, up to and including criminal charges, but to start this practice with a leading Chinese business person – rather than the dozens of culpable U.S. CEOs and CFOs – is a stunning provocation to the Chinese government, business community and public.
Ms. Meng is charged with violating U.S. sanctions on Iran. Yet, consider her arrest in the context of the large number of companies, U.S. and non-U.S., that have violated America’s sanctions against Iran and other countries. In 2011, for example, JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.
And JP Morgan Chase was hardly alone in violating U.S. sanctions. Since 2010, the following major financial institutions paid fines for such violations: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered and Wells Fargo.
None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanction-busting banks were arrested and taken into custody for these violations. In all of these cases, the corporation – rather than an individual manager – was held accountable. Nor were they held accountable for the pervasive lawbreaking in the lead-up to or aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, for which the banks paid a staggering US$243 billion in fines, according to a recent tally. In light of this record, Ms. Meng’s arrest is a shocking break with practice. Yes, hold CEOs and CFOs accountable – but start at home in order to avoid hypocrisy, self-interest disguised as high principle and the risk of inciting a new global conflict.
Quite transparently, the U.S. action against Ms. Meng really seems to be part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to undermine China’s economy by imposing tariffs, closing Western markets to Chinese high-technology exports and blocking Chinese purchases of U.S. and European technology companies. One can say, without exaggeration, that this is part of an economic war on China – and a reckless one at that.
Huawei is one of China’s most important technology companies and therefore a prime target in the Trump administration’s effort to slow or stop China’s advance into several high-technology sectors. America’s motivations in this economic war are partly commercial – to protect and favour laggard U.S. companies – and partly geopolitical. They certainly have nothing to do with upholding the international rule of law.
The U.S. appears to be trying to target Huawei especially because of the company’s success in marketing cutting-edge 5G technologies globally. The U.S. claims the company poses a specific security risk through hidden surveillance capabilities in its hardware and software. Yet the U.S. government has provided no evidence for this claim.
A recent diatribe against Huawei in the Financial Times is revealing in this regard. After conceding that “you cannot have concrete proof of interference in ICT, unless you are lucky enough to find the needle in the haystack,” the author simply asserts that “you don’t take the risk of putting your security in the hands of a potential adversary.” In other words: While we can’t really point to misbehavior by Huawei, we should blacklist the company nonetheless.
When global trade rules obstruct Mr. Trump’s gangster tactics, then the rules have to go, according to him. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted as much last week in Brussels: “Our administration,” he said, is “lawfully exiting or renegotiating outdated or harmful treaties, trade agreements, and other international arrangements that don’t serve our sovereign interests, or the interests of our allies.” Yet before it exits these agreements, the administration is trashing them through reckless and unilateral actions.
The unprecedented arrest of Ms. Meng is even more provocative because it is based on U.S. extra-territorial sanctions – that is, the claim by the U.S. that it can order other countries to stop trading with third parties such as Cuba or Iran. The U.S. would certainly not tolerate China or any other country telling American companies with whom they can or cannot trade.
Sanctions regarding non-national parties (such as U.S. sanctions on a Chinese business) should not be enforced by one country alone, but according to agreements reached within the United Nations Security Council. In that regard, UN Security Council Resolution 2231 calls on all countries to drop sanctions on Iran as part of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement. Yet the United States. – and only the United States – now rejects the Security Council’s role in such matters. The Trump administration, not Huawei or China, is today’s greatest threat to the international rule of law, and therefore to global peace.
OPINION
A wiser government would have warned Meng Wanzhou to stay away
MICHAEL BYERS
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 18 HOURS AGO
UPDATED DECEMBER 13, 2018
Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.
Two decades ago, I had the privilege of carrying Ian Brownlie’s briefcase. The Oxford law professor was representing Amnesty International in the House of Lords. He argued in favour of upholding a Spanish extradition request for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a request received by the London Metropolitan Police Service under the European Extradition Treaty.
The Pinochet case held the global media spotlight for months and established an important precedent: that former heads of state have no immunity from prosecution for serious international crimes. But it only ever happened because of two coincidences.
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First, the senior lawyer at the British Foreign Office was apparently out of the country when the Metropolitan Police called to ask whether Pinochet had diplomatic immunity. The junior lawyer who took the call answered that narrow question correctly: Pinochet was not an accredited diplomat.
A more experienced international lawyer would have recognized another form of immunity – head of state immunity – was in play, and this much more difficult issue would be appealed all the way to the House of Lords. He would also have recognized that arresting a former head of state has political consequences, and bumped the decision up to the minister’s office.
Had that happened, Pinochet might have been discretely advised to fly home.
The second coincidence was that then-justice minister, Jack Straw, had been an anti-Pinochet activist in his youth. In the crucial few days after the arrest, he apparently hesitated about intervening. During the delay, the courts became involved, closing off all opportunity for political decision-making.
Only when all the legal appeals were heard, three doctors (handpicked by the Tony Blair government) declared Pinochet medically unfit to stand trial. It was a dubious finding: A vigorous looking Pinochet abandoned his wheelchair on the tarmac in Santiago.
The Blair government, however, was relieved to see Pinochet go. The arrest and months of media coverage were politically and economically damaging. London is both a global financial centre and a safe haven for autocrats. These two facets of the city are linked: many of the most desirable homes are foreign owned, and one is more likely to see a Russian oligarch or a Saudi prince in a fine London restaurant as a member of the British upper-class.
All of which bring us to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou on her arrival in Vancouver. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has admitted knowing about the extradition request several days in advance – in other words, before Ms. Meng boarded her flight to Canada. There was ample time for a discrete conversation with someone at Huawei Canada.
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A similar suggestion by former deputy prime minister John Manley – that the Trudeau government missed an opportunity for “creative incompetence” – has been decried as an attack on the rule of law. However, there is nothing in the U.S.-Canada Extradition Treaty that prohibits warning an individual to stay beyond the reach of Canadian law.
The Chinese government knows this. Its reaction has been excessive – including detaining two Canadian citizens – but the anger will have been stoked by the knowledge Ms. Meng could have been warned.
The situation Mr. Trudeau found himself in was easier to escape than that which enveloped Messrs. Straw and Blair. Pinochet was already in Britain when the extradition request was received. Ms. Meng had not yet boarded her flight to Canada.
Moreover, Pinochet was accused of torture; Ms. Meng is accused of bank fraud. The Spanish judge seeking Pinochet’s extradition was upholding the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The U.S. judge seeking Ms. Meng’s extradition is enforcing U.S. sanctions against Iran, sanctions the United Nations has recommended be withdrawn.
The request for Ms. Meng’s extradition was never the issue over which the future of China-Canada relations should have been decided. Mr. Trudeau seeks to justify his inaction as respecting the rule of law, but he had an opening – and missed it.
Now that the courts are involved, the moment for political decision-making has past. Years of appeals and worsening China-Canada relations could lie ahead.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
Yet with Ms. Meng free on bail, she may well skip the country. The idea that some security guards and a GPS anklet could prevent this from happening is naive at worst and hopeful at best. The Chinese government has hundreds of officials and agents in Vancouver, and dozens of airplanes and cargo ships depart for China each day.
Losing Ms. Meng might be the least-worst outcome. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valour.
A wiser government would have warned Meng Wanzhou to stay away
MICHAEL BYERS
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 18 HOURS AGO
UPDATED DECEMBER 13, 2018
Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.
Two decades ago, I had the privilege of carrying Ian Brownlie’s briefcase. The Oxford law professor was representing Amnesty International in the House of Lords. He argued in favour of upholding a Spanish extradition request for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a request received by the London Metropolitan Police Service under the European Extradition Treaty.
The Pinochet case held the global media spotlight for months and established an important precedent: that former heads of state have no immunity from prosecution for serious international crimes. But it only ever happened because of two coincidences.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
First, the senior lawyer at the British Foreign Office was apparently out of the country when the Metropolitan Police called to ask whether Pinochet had diplomatic immunity. The junior lawyer who took the call answered that narrow question correctly: Pinochet was not an accredited diplomat.
A more experienced international lawyer would have recognized another form of immunity – head of state immunity – was in play, and this much more difficult issue would be appealed all the way to the House of Lords. He would also have recognized that arresting a former head of state has political consequences, and bumped the decision up to the minister’s office.
Had that happened, Pinochet might have been discretely advised to fly home.
The second coincidence was that then-justice minister, Jack Straw, had been an anti-Pinochet activist in his youth. In the crucial few days after the arrest, he apparently hesitated about intervening. During the delay, the courts became involved, closing off all opportunity for political decision-making.
Only when all the legal appeals were heard, three doctors (handpicked by the Tony Blair government) declared Pinochet medically unfit to stand trial. It was a dubious finding: A vigorous looking Pinochet abandoned his wheelchair on the tarmac in Santiago.
The Blair government, however, was relieved to see Pinochet go. The arrest and months of media coverage were politically and economically damaging. London is both a global financial centre and a safe haven for autocrats. These two facets of the city are linked: many of the most desirable homes are foreign owned, and one is more likely to see a Russian oligarch or a Saudi prince in a fine London restaurant as a member of the British upper-class.
All of which bring us to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou on her arrival in Vancouver. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has admitted knowing about the extradition request several days in advance – in other words, before Ms. Meng boarded her flight to Canada. There was ample time for a discrete conversation with someone at Huawei Canada.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
A similar suggestion by former deputy prime minister John Manley – that the Trudeau government missed an opportunity for “creative incompetence” – has been decried as an attack on the rule of law. However, there is nothing in the U.S.-Canada Extradition Treaty that prohibits warning an individual to stay beyond the reach of Canadian law.
The Chinese government knows this. Its reaction has been excessive – including detaining two Canadian citizens – but the anger will have been stoked by the knowledge Ms. Meng could have been warned.
The situation Mr. Trudeau found himself in was easier to escape than that which enveloped Messrs. Straw and Blair. Pinochet was already in Britain when the extradition request was received. Ms. Meng had not yet boarded her flight to Canada.
Moreover, Pinochet was accused of torture; Ms. Meng is accused of bank fraud. The Spanish judge seeking Pinochet’s extradition was upholding the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The U.S. judge seeking Ms. Meng’s extradition is enforcing U.S. sanctions against Iran, sanctions the United Nations has recommended be withdrawn.
The request for Ms. Meng’s extradition was never the issue over which the future of China-Canada relations should have been decided. Mr. Trudeau seeks to justify his inaction as respecting the rule of law, but he had an opening – and missed it.
Now that the courts are involved, the moment for political decision-making has past. Years of appeals and worsening China-Canada relations could lie ahead.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
Yet with Ms. Meng free on bail, she may well skip the country. The idea that some security guards and a GPS anklet could prevent this from happening is naive at worst and hopeful at best. The Chinese government has hundreds of officials and agents in Vancouver, and dozens of airplanes and cargo ships depart for China each day.
Losing Ms. Meng might be the least-worst outcome. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valour.
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