Should the ISIS 'Beatles' be Executed?

[ddt]

//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."

The term you're looking is "sovereign state", not "country", which is messy because it can mean a subdivision within a sovereign state, e.g., England in the UK or Curacao within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Likewise, "state" is messy as it can also mean a subdivision of a sovereign state, e.g., in the case of US states.

(below, I'll just use "state" instead of "sovereign state").

If you go by the constitutive theory of statehood, i.e., that a state is only a state when it's recognized by all other states, the concept gets messy around the edges. There are plenty of even UN member states that are not universally recognized, e.g., Cyprus is not recognized by Turkey and until 2009, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were not recognized by Liechtenstein because the prince of Liechtenstein was pissed off they had expropriated some of his private property.

 

[ddt]

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?

No, the City of London does not maintain international relations. The Vatican does (though I note that most international relations are done through the Holy See, a sovereign entity without territory; see also the Knights of Malta for this concept).

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

No, neither maintains international relations.

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

No. NATO is purely a military alliance. The UN is specifically a club of states. The only one that might, in the future, have aspirations to statehood is the EU.

 

[Sabrina]

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.

Is that what we did? I was under the impression the UK was offering them up, not that we'd asked for them. Let me go re-read the OP again for clarification...

ETA: Okay, upon re-reading the article, I'm still getting the impression that the UK offered them up to the US, not that the US had ever asked for them to be tried here. Sounds like the Kurds don't want the responsibility for holding these guys any longer, are trying to give them to the UK where they (until recently) held citizenship, and the UK said, "nope, we don't want them; let's turn them over to the US where they'll get the treatment they deserve" and rescinded their citizenship to facilitate that process. In very simplified terms, that's my take on what's happened, but I'd be happy to change my mind if someone else has any more data.

 

[Vixen]

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:

I have a big problem with the highlighted.

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.

The salient point is that the two defendants are not British, even if they once were.

In effect, the UK has washed its hands of them.

 

[Vixen]

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.

They are not US citizens, British citizens, nor Kurdish, so who does the USA apply to for extradition?

 

[theprestige]

They are not US citizens, British citizens, nor Kurdish, so who does the USA apply to for extradition?

I'm pretty sure Craig4 is saying if the guys just stay with the Kurds, eliminates the need for anyone to apply for extradition.

But why would the US need to apply for "extradition"? They could just as easily find the Kurdish faction that's holding the guys, and trade them for a pallet of cash or whatever. And if the guys aren't citizens, the US wouldn't even have to worry about some other country complaining about the exchange.

 

[ddt]

The salient point is that the two defendants are not British, even if they once were.

In effect, the UK has washed its hands of them.

No, the salient point is that that the UK stripped them of their British citizenship after the Kurds had captured them.

 

[GlennB]

No, the salient point is that that the UK stripped them of their British citizenship after the Kurds had captured them.

Yes. Meanwhile passing evidence to the US, then announcing they won't pass further evidence, as there's a legal challenge going on.

Strikes me - big time - that these are shenanigans in the realm of 'plausible deniabilty'. Job done. Evidence passed. Sorry guv. Who the **** cares about the details?

It's the world we live in.

 

[theprestige]

Yes. Meanwhile passing evidence to the US, then announcing they won't pass further evidence, as there's a legal challenge going on.

Strikes me - big time - that these are shenanigans in the realm of 'plausible deniabilty'. Job done. Evidence passed. Sorry guv. Who the **** cares about the details?

It's the world we live in.

Well, it's the world ISIS fighters live in, anyway.

 

[Vixen]

No, the salient point is that that the UK stripped them of their British citizenship after the Kurds had captured them.

Der. Of course it was after as they had no idea of the identity of the likely perps until then.

 

[ddt]

Der. Of course it was after as they had no idea of the identity of the likely perps until then.

What are you babbling? These "Beatles" had long been identified from their videos before they were captured.

 

[Vixen]

What are you babbling? These "Beatles" had long been identified from their videos before they were captured.

Are you sure about that?

The murderous pair were detained in North Syria by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in January.

The SDF originally arrested the duo after suspecting the two men were foreign fighters and handed them over to American Special Operations forces.

The Americans then confirmed their identities using fingerprints and other bio-metric measurements.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5536512/isis-beatles-alexanda-kotey-el-shafee-elsheikh-jihadi-john/

 

[Fudbucker]

If a country wants to enact the death penalty, they shouldn't pussyfoot around. If someone is vile enough to warrant state execution, go to town on them: torture them to death and televise it.

 

[ddt]

Are you sure about that?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5536512/isis-beatles-alexanda-kotey-el-shafee-elsheikh-jihadi-john/

The Daily Fail in the OP and now the Sun? Tsk.

From wiki:

On January 10, 2017, the US Department of State formally designated Kotey as a terrorist, under the authority of Executive Order 13224.[8] This designation prohibited US citizens, financial institutions, and other US corporations, from having any financial dealings with him.

and:

On March 30, 2017, Elsheikh and four other men were named as suspected terrorists, by the US State Department, under Executive Order 13224.[6] This Executive Order signed by President George W. Bush, shortly after al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, 2001, allowed the State Department to bar US citizens, US financial institutions, and other US corporations, from having any financial transactions with designated individuals.

both with a link to the US State Dept.

 

[TragicMonkey]

If a country wants to enact the death penalty, they shouldn't pussyfoot around. If someone is vile enough to warrant state execution, go to town on them: torture them to death and televise it.

No, it's like the old saw about Puritans banning bear-baiting not because it was cruel to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.