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Swiss National Interests

little grey rabbit

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Apr 4, 2010
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In the recent decision to release the convicted pedophile Roman Polanski from house arrest and refuse an extradition request the Swiss Government said that national interest considerations had played a role

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10601930.stm

The justice ministry added that that national interests were taken into consideration in the decision.

A Swiss official said the US cannot appeal the decision.
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What are the national interests that were threatened by having Roman Polanski serve his sentence for his paedophilia and who was issuing the threats?
 
:( when this thread was still in the CT section it was far more exciting to read.
 
little grey rabbit said:
What are the national interests that were threatened by having Roman Polanski serve his sentence for his paedophilia and who was issuing the threats?
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Sovereignty of the Switzerland, the rule of law, and the necessity for any country requesting extradition to actually prove their allegations.

The threats were, of course, posed by the American prosecutors who expected the Swiss authorities to act on their unsupported words, and then refused to provide supporting evidence for those words when asked.

How would you like this exchange?

"Dear American authorities. You need to extradite 'little grey rabbit' to Ruritania. He was convicted of terrorist activities here."

"Really? Where and when was this?"

"You don't need to know that. You just need to know that we convicted him."

"Oh,... all right. Here he is."
 
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What did the Ruritanians ever do to deserve that?

ETA: actually forget about that; I was confusing it with the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
 
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drkitten said:
Sovereignty of the Switzerland, the rule of law, and the necessity for any country requesting extradition to actually prove their allegations.

The threats were, of course, posed by the American prosecutors who expected the Swiss authorities to act on their unsupported words, and then refused to provide supporting evidence for those words when asked.

How would you like this exchange?

"Dear American authorities. You need to extradite 'little grey rabbit' to Ruritania. He was convicted of terrorist activities here."

"Really? Where and when was this?"

"You don't need to know that. You just need to know that we convicted him."

"Oh,... all right. Here he is."
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Are you really trying to suggest that there is any doubt as to where, when, (or if!) Polanski was convicted? The information that was not provided was not of the "where and when was this?" variety.


"Dear American authorities. You need to extradite 'little grey rabbit' to Ruritania. He was convicted of terrorist activities here."

"Really? Where and when was this?"

"October 8th, 2004, in Ruritania City. Here are the court records, which include him entering a guilty plea and acknowledging that he understood that there are no guarantees on what his final sentence would be."

"Oh. Well, we heard that maybe the judge might possibly have been going to mandate too harsh and/or too lenient a sentence. Before we can consider extraditing him, we need you to provide the judge's personal diaries, and copies of his Netflix queue on the day of sentencing."
 
ZirconBlue said:
Are you really trying to suggest that there is any doubt as to where, when, (or if!) Polanski was convicted?
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I am not.

The information that was not provided was not of the "where and when was this?" variety.
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Doesn't matter.

"Dear American authorities. You need to extradite 'little grey rabbit' to Ruritania. He was convicted of terrorist activities here."

"Really? Where and when was this?"

"October 8th, 2004, in Ruritania City. Here are the court records, which include him entering a guilty plea and acknowledging that he understood that there are no guarantees on what his final sentence would be."

"Oh. Well, we heard that maybe the judge might possibly have been going to mandate too harsh and/or too lenient a sentence. Before we can consider extraditing him, we need you to provide the judge's personal diaries, and copies of his Netflix queue on the day of sentencing."
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Allow me to continue the discussion.

"Well, we don't consider that information to be relevant. We won't provide it."

"You must."

"No, we don't."

"You have to if you want the case to continue. We are concerned about the basic competence, fairness, and truthfulness of the judge; unless we can satisfy ourselves that there has been no judicial misconduct, we won't extradite him. Under article 10 of the extradition treaty you signed, we can ask for any information we like. In light of the potentially serious miscarriage of justice this case involves, we want more information. Of course, if you find your obligations under the extradition treaty to be too onerous, we will be happy to withdraw altogether from this treaty and cease cooperating in any way with US law enforcement, including your attempts to collect information on the UBS tax evaders."

"You can't do that."

"Certainly, we can. The question is whether or not you want us to."

"No, no, we certainly don't want that. But under no circumstances will we provide further information on the 'rabbit' case."

"Well, in that case, we don't have enough information to extradite him and will have to release him."
 
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So now he's a pedophile too? When did this happen?
 
Travis said:
So now he's a pedophile too? When did this happen?
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When he screwed the 13 year old at that party in LA. Actually, I think the problem was statutory rape, rather than pedophilia ... which I think was your point.

He realized that if he told the judge "But your honor, she looked seventeen to me" wasn't going to do him any good.
 
Darth Rotor said:
When he screwed the 13 year old at that party in LA. Actually, I think the problem was statutory rape, rather than pedophilia ... which I think was your point.

He realized that if he told the judge "But your honor, she looked seventeen to me" wasn't going to do him any good.
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;)
 
drkitten said:
"You have to if you want the case to continue. We are concerned about the basic competence, fairness, and truthfulness of the judge; unless we can satisfy ourselves that there has been no judicial misconduct, we won't extradite him. Under article 10 of the extradition treaty you signed, we can ask for any information we like. In light of the potentially serious miscarriage of justice this case involves, we want more information. "
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Here, let me fix this for you...

"But but but! We are concerned about the basic competence, fairness, and truthfulness of the judge; unless we can satisfy ourselves that there has been no judicial misconduct, we won't extradite him."

"We share those concerns, and Mr. Polanski will be given every opportunity to present his case before the court. The place for him to prove that is in a court of law, where he and the state will have full access to evidence and witnesses. However, he needs to be in the country to do that. That is why we are requesting him to be extradited. "

"Oh... but but but! We heard from no less a source than Roman Polanski's own lawyers that he already served his sentence! We can't extradite him if he doesn't have at least 6 months left to serve, you know!"

"He was never sentenced. When we tried to sentence him, he fled the country. He can face up to 2 years in prison, which more than meets the 6 month requirement of the treaty."

"Oh... but but but! We heard that the victim herself wants the charges dropped!"

"We try to take the victim's feelings into account. The victim understandably wants the case to be over. And it would have been, had Mr. Polanski not fled. As soon as he returns for his sentencing, we can end the case as the victim wants."

"Oh... but but but... uhh... hey remember that secret document that your judge ruled couldn't be unsealed? The one we said we didn't need and has no relevance to this extradition?"

"Yeah."

"Well uh, it turns out we'd like to see it after all."

"You said you didn't need it. That's part of the reason the judge sealed it."

"Yeah well, under article 10 of the extradition treaty you signed, we can ask for any information we like. And now we want that."

"We can't give that to you, as I'm sure you know. It's sealed by law."

"OH! Well, why didn't you say so??? Clearly we can't extradite him if we don't have that secret document! It could have really important information in it. You know, like... stuff. Really important stuff. It's a matter of national interest for us to see that document. Sorry, guess we'll have to let him go! National interest and all."
 
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I think the victim wants the charges dropped because Polanski paid her a lot of money.

Fair enough from her point of view. Indeed I would support anyone using such a situation to their financial advantages because god knows there is no other law enforcement organization that will ever meet its obligations when up against "those that threaten national interests"

The best thing to do is try and sting them for cash.
 
little grey rabbit said:
I think the victim wants the charges dropped because Polanski paid her a lot of money.

Fair enough from her point of view. Indeed I would support anyone using such a situation to their financial advantages because god knows there is no other law enforcement organization that will ever meet its obligations when up against "those that threaten national interests"

The best thing to do is try and sting them for cash.
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what the heck are you talking about?
 
ARubberChickenWithAPulley said:
Here, let me fix this for you...

"But but but! We are concerned about the basic competence, fairness, and truthfulness of the judge; unless we can satisfy ourselves that there has been no judicial misconduct, we won't extradite him."

"We share those concerns, and Mr. Polanski will be given every opportunity to present his case before the court. The place for him to prove that is in a court of law, where he and the state will have full access to evidence and witnesses. However, he needs to be in the country to do that. That is why we are requesting him to be extradited. "
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"I'm sorry. We can't extradite him on the basis of some vague undertaking that he 'will be given every opportunity to present his case before the court,' especially a court whose basic fairness has been called into question. If you can't provide satisfactory answers now, we'll have to decline to extradite."

This isn't that unusual a request. Many countries, for example, will only extradite to the US if they're giving firm undertakings that the defendant will not face the death penalty if convicted or something like that.

The US not only declined to provide any undertaking about what Polanski might face (in the face of legitimate Swiss concerns), but failed to provide relevant documents detailing what sort of deal he had originally been offered -- and was faced with US stonewalling in the face of whether or not the US intended to welsh on that deal as offered.
 
Diagnostic criteria for pedophilia requires the individual to be either primarily or exclusively attracted to prepubescents. The girl in question was post-puberty and there is no evidence that Polanski is primarily or only attracted to children.
 
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