The Significance of the Requirement of Double Criminality in the Law of Extradition

תקציר

This was an appeal from a decision of the Tel-Aviv-Yafo District Court, declaring the appellant Ross to be liable to extradition on the Attorney General's petition presented at the request of the Government of the United States. The appellant had been indicted before the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana on two charges, namely, transportation of a person in interstate and foreign commerce and receiving ransom money, in contravention of, respectively, sees. 1201 and 1202, chap. 18, para. 55, of the Federal Criminal Code. It was alleged that on August 21, 1972, the said Ross, being in possession of a revolver had kidnapped the two and a half year old Diana Cando Creon from her parents' home in the town of Pueblo (Mexico); that between that date and September 12 of the same year he had taken the child across international and interstate borders, from Mexico to the United States and, within the United States, from New Orleans, Louisiana to Biloxi, Mississippi; that he had illegally detained her throughout this period for the purpose of obtaining ransom, conducting negotiations to that effect with her father; and that he eventually succeeded in obtaining, in return for her release, the sum of U.S. $ 105,000 -- after which the little girl was found safe and sound in a hotel in Biloxi. Between Israel, the requested State, and the United States, the requesting State, there is an Extradition Convention 2 which provides for reciprocity with regard to the extradition of offenders, thereby satisfying the requirement of sec. 2(1) of the Israeli Extradition Law, 1954' according to which extradition is permissible only where there exists a reciprocal agreement between Israel and the requesting State. Under sec. 2(2) of the Extradition Law there is a further requirement, namely, that the act for which extradition is sought, be an offence not only under the lex loci of the state requesting extradition, but also under the lex fori, i.e., the law of Israel, had it been committed in Israel; and that the offence be one included in the Schedule to the Extradition Law, 4 unless the extradition agreement has specified a more restricted list of extradition offences. 5 Para. (a) of the said Schedule requires that the offence with which the person sought is charged be punishable by at least three years imprisonment, that is to say, that if committed in Israel the offence would amount to a felony.' Article 2 of the Extradition Convention with the U.S. contains a detailed enumeration of extradition offences, all of which are punishable -- as required -- by a maximum term of at least three years imprisonment. The list includes (under item 9) in the Hebrew version, the offences of "Abduction or false imprisonment" and in the English version the offences of "Kidnapping; abduction; false imprisonment" and (under item 16) in both the Hebrew and the English versions, the offence of "Extortion". The first item is relevant to the extradition request in the Ross case based on sec. 1201, and the second to that based on sec. 1202 of the Federal Criminal Code. Both these provisions of the Federal Criminal Code are found in the Chapter entitled "Kidnapping". As for the requirement that a person may not be extradited unless sufficient evidence is adduced, according to the law of the requested state, to justify his committal for trial in that State, had the act been perpetrated within its jurisdiction,7 no difficulty arose in the case under review, for there was no allegation that there was insufficient evidence to prove the charges.