Should the ISIS 'Beatles' be Executed?

[Myriad]

Maybe you like what they did in the middle ages - beheaded political or monarchic opponents in a public square. Could have been Davies' and BoJo's recent fate. Or even Hillary's.

No, I wouldn't like that. What made you think otherwise?

 

[Vixen]

No, I wouldn't like that. What made you think otherwise?

You wrote:

"I'm starting to wonder if abolishing the death penalty completely is actually a good idea after all.

It doesn't have to be the standard punishment for stealing a loaf of bread. Or for every premeditated murder. Or even for every horrifying aggravated premeditated murder.

But sometimes it seems that as soon as a society decides that no crime is so heinous as to justify the death penalty, criminals go to great lengths to try to prove it wrong."


My response was rather tongue-in-cheek. :/

 

[GlennB]

Already the UK Gov. has caved - to a small extent - and will offer 'no further evidence' to the US about this case. Meanwhile, evidence that has been given cannot be un-given. The legal battle will continue, but our new Home Sec, Javid, is beginning already to look just as stupid as his predecessor. Will the removal of these men's citizenship also be overturned? I strongly suspect it will.

Some good points here:

"Why should the government, which has a fixed policy of prosecuting these alleged foreign terrorist fighters in the UK courts, have suddenly decided to step aside and allow these two particular suspects to be handed to the Americans for trial? If they are prepared to devote huge resources to trying every returning jihadist foot soldier in crown courts in this country – as has happened in scores of cases – why the sudden reluctance in this case, which is so emblematic of the most brutal of the crimes allegedly committed by Isis?

link

 

[Vixen]

UPDATE:

The UK has suspended co-operation with the US over two Islamic State suspects.

This follows legal pressure to demand that the pair do not face the death penalty if tried in the United States.

This week, ministers said they could share intelligence with the US that could lead to a conviction, without opposing a death penalty sentence.

Looks like there is a legal challenge by one of the men's mums.

On Wednesday morning the Home Office agreed that it would temporarily suspend co-operation with the American authorities until a judge has had a chance to consider an application for judicial review.

Those lawyers have now prepared detailed grounds challenging Home Secretary Sajid Javid's decision to share information without a death penalty assurance - meaning a case could be before High Court judges in days.

Lawyers for Mr Elsheikh's mother said the home secretary's actions revealed "a clear and dramatic departure from the UK's long standing international and domestic commitment to oppose the continuing exercise of the death penalty."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44973586

I predict the Judge will just go along with Sajid Javid. The legal loophole is the 2014 Nationality Act, which allows a British citizen to be stripped of citizenship. The verdict will therefore be IMV, 'You ain't no Brit, bruv'.

 

[GlennB]

UPDATE:

Looks like there is a legal challenge by one of the men's mums.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44973586
I predict the Judge will just go along with Sajid Javid. The legal loophole is the 2014 Nationality Act, which allows a British citizen to be stripped of citizenship. The verdict will therefore be IMV, 'You ain't no Brit, bruv'.

I'll take that bet and say he/she/they won't

 

[Vixen]

I'll take that bet and say he/she/they won't

Bet's on.

 

[ddt]

I'll take that bet and say he/she/they won't

I'll make an even more specific guess. From your Guardian link:

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this case is the haunting possibility that this arrangement reflected a prior agreement with the Trump administration by which British officials would actively pave the way for these two men to be put in jeopardy of execution.

My bet is that the mother of El Shafee Elsheikh will also launch a FOIA request for such communications. And that Sajid Javid will retract the stripping of the British citizenship, citing an "administrative error".

There's one thing I don't understand about the BBC story:

But British prosecutors can't bring the men for trial here because they're not being held by a recognised state with whom the UK has a legally recognised extradition agreement - it would amount to kidnap.

Why? What's stopping the Kurds from handing them over to UK forces which then fly them to the UK?

 

[angrysoba]

I oppose the death penalty, but I have never had any sympathy for those who commit a capital crime in jurisdictions with the death penalty. They surely knew the consequences of their acts.

Would this include people stoned for adultery, apostasy and blasphemy?

 

[Ziggurat]

Should the ISIS 'Beatles' be Executed?

Yes. Copyright infringement and identity theft are serious crimes.

In this specific case, I wonder if it's the threat of execution which is really what the US wants. Cooperate and give up intel, or face execution. But that threat must be credible to work.

 

[theprestige]

Why? What's stopping the Kurds from handing them over to UK forces which then fly them to the UK?

The Kurds aren't a recognized state with an extradition agreement with the UK.

If the UK accepted the solution you propose, they'd be complicit in an extrajudicial kidnapping.

 

[Sabrina]

That depends whether you subscribe to the constitutive or the declarative theory of statehood. According to the constitutive theory, a state is an entity that is recognized by other states. According to the declarative theory, a state is any entity that fulfills certain criteria.

In any case, I don't think that ISIS actually had already a concept of nationality and recognized "ISIS citizens"; and neither does the Syrian-Kurdish breakaway region.

IIRC, there was an attempt by ISIS to mint its own currency at one point, which you can't really have unless you are an official, recognized country. The effort failed, but the attempt was made. Now that they no longer really hold any official territory (having been reduced back to an insurgency), they can't really make that effort any longer, but I would argue they do, or at the least did, consider themselves a sovereign nation.

The Kurdish question is a bit more sticky, not in the least because there are Turkish Kurds, Iraqi Kurds, and Syrian Kurds in the mix, none of whom really get along with each other, but all of whom think they should be their own country separate from Syria, Turkey, and Iraq. Whether they think they should all join into one big conglomerate called Kurdistan is another story entirely.

Middle East politics; the ultimate defintion of contradiction in terms.

 

[ddt]

The Kurds aren't a recognized state with an extradition agreement with the UK.

If the UK accepted the solution you propose, they'd be complicit in an extrajudicial kidnapping.

I'm a bit surprised that a UK court would have a problem with how the suspect came into their dock. US courts obviously have not, nor Israeli courts, nor the former International Yugoslav Tribunal. Here are two cases involving UK troops:

At exactly the same time, another SAS team entered Prijedor hospital, posing as Red Cross officials, and arrested its director, Milan Kovacevic, who as the town's wartime mayor had given the orders for the round-up of Muslims.

I have a big problem with the highlighted.

The next SAS operation, codenamed Ensue, did not take place until September 1998, when a team crossed into Serbia and grabbed a suspect called Stevan Todorovic.

The highlighted makes it obviously kidnapping. SFOR had no mandate in Serbia. To clarify: the SAS forces in both the quotes were part of SFOR, a NATO force that had a UNSC mandate to maintain peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

If someone in Torquay traps a burglar in their broom closet and calls 999, the local police and prosecutor will be happy to collect him and prosecute him for burglary, notwithstanding the fact that a private citizen may, in principle, not bereave someone of their freedom. Now, because Syrian Kurdistan is not a recognized state, they're also essentially private citizens who have trapped these two ISIS soldiers in their broom closet. So the Kurds should hand them over to the official Syrian authorities. i.e., Assad's government, so that Assad-Syria can decide upon a UK extradition request?

Let's explore a couple of other options how far this complicity in extrajudicial kidnapping would go.

1) What if it had not been the Kurds, but UK forces on the ground in Syria that had captured these two? Would it also have been kidnapping if these UK forces then had transported them back to the UK?

2) What if the Kurds hand them over to the US; is the UK then allowed to file an extradition request with the US?

3) What if the Kurds stow these two ISIS soldiers in a big box, à la Eichmann, put the box on a plane, and at Heathrow, customs opens the box and finds the ISIS boys in them. Is a UK court still prohibited from trying them?

4) What if the Kurds would bound and gag them, roll them over the border, and Turkish border guards would arrest the ISIS boys. Could the UK then file an extradition request with Turkey?

Et cetera. The possibilities of adding one indirection in the chain of custody are nigh endless.

 

[JoeMorgue]

//Slight hijack//

Trying to nail down a single, definitive definition of a "Country" is near impossible.

Somebody make me a concise set of objective criteria that includes:
The United States
The individual countries of Europe
Vatican City ("The Least Country Like Country That Is")

But doesn't include:
The individual US States
The European Union
The United Kingdom
Taiwan ("Errrr I mean Chinese Taipei which is totally not a country. *Whispers* Is China gone yet?")
Hong Kong ("The Most Country Like Country That Isn't" and "Hong Kong had a team in 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing which doesn't make any kind of sense...")

But doesn't make an equally valid definitive country / not country declaration about:
Kosovo (Country or rebellious province of Serbia?)
Palestine (Having an opinion is a "Press Here to Start WWIII" Button)
Sealand or any similar "country."

As CGP Grey declared as his answer in his "How Many Countries Are There?" video the best is "to say about 200. To give a more definitive answer implies more agreement then there is because at the end of the day what makes you a country is other people agreeing you are a country."

 

[zooterkin]

//Slight hijack//

Trying to nail down a single, definitive definition of a "Country" is near impossible.

Somebody make me a concise set of objective criteria that includes:
The United States
The individual countries of Europe
Vatican City ("The Least Country Like Country That Is")

But doesn't include:
The individual US States
The European Union
The United Kingdom
Taiwan ("Errrr I mean Chinese Taipei which is totally not a country. *Whispers* Is China gone yet?")
Hong Kong ("The Most Country Like Country That Isn't" and "Hong Kong had a team in 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing which doesn't make any kind of sense...")

But doesn't make an equally valid definitive country / not country declaration about:
Kosovo (Country or rebellious province of Serbia?)
Palestine (Having an opinion is a "Press Here to Start WWIII" Button)
Sealand

As CGP Grey declared as his answer in his "How Many Countries Are There?" video the best is "to say about 200. To give a more definitive answer implies more agreement then there is because at the end of the day what makes you a country is other people agreeing you are a country."

Why would you want to exclude the UK as a country? It is a sovereign state (made up of other countries).

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why would you want to exclude the UK as a country? It is a sovereign state (made up of other countries).

Okay. Then so is the European Union, NATO, the UN, and others arguably.

And if England is a country within a country, then are the US States countries within a country?

Hell how is the City of London (with it's weird, quasi-independent status within the UK) more or less of a country then Vatican City?

 

[TragicMonkey]

When your mom and her lawyers try to get you off the hook you lose the glamour of martyrdom even if they do ultimately execute you.

 

[Major Major]

That is an issue I have with some "Progressives": they seem unwilling to face the fact of the evil that people are capable of.
They also act like every criminal is capable of rehabilitation:That is nonsense. Some are, some aren't.
If you oppose the death penalty, fine;but then have the option of Life Imprisonment Without the Possibility of Parole...unless new evidence comes up proving you are innocent.

The late Sir Terry Pratchett had a character in one of his novels make an interesting comment:

“Do you really think all this deters crime, Mr. Trooper?” he said.

“Well, in the generality of things I’d say it’s hard to tell, given that it’s hard to find evidence of crimes not committed,” said the hangman, giving the trapdoor a final rattle. “But in the specificality, sir, I’d say it’s very efficacious.”

“Meaning what?” said Moist.

“Meaning I’ve never seen someone up here more’n once, sir. Shall we go?”

— Going Postal, Page 10

 

[JoeMorgue]

That is an issue I have with some "Progressives": they seem unwilling to face the fact of the evil that people are capable of.

I'm... of a complicated mindset about this.

Speaking very, very generally, not of progressives or liberals or this group or that group per se, but in general and very broadly speaking "Good" people will, almost by definition have a smaller pool of available actions than "Evil."

"Evil" will always, again almost by pure definition, be able to go places that "Good" cannot go.

That's not a bad thing and cannot be changed without the "Good" side becoming the "Bad" side but the "Good" side does have to at least acknowledge and account for the fact they are giving the other side a stronger hand.

 

[Craig4]

What's to stop the US from just not asking the Kurds to give up these two? I'm pretty sure the problem is solved at that point.

 

[zooterkin]

Okay. Then so is the European Union, NATO, the UN, and others arguably.

I suppose you could argue it if you chose, though it seems a stretch to me. The UK has been a country since 1800 and the Acts of Union.

And if England is a country within a country, then are the US States countries within a country?

I don’t know; again, that doesn’t alter the fact that the UK is made up of separate countries.

Hell how is the City of London (with it's weird, quasi-independent status within the UK) more or less of a country then Vatican City?

The status of the City of London is unusual, for historical reasons, but I wouldn’t say it was quasi-independent, nor a separate country.