02 Mar Shocker: US Won’t Extradite CIA Operatives to Italy
The story yesterday from the WaPo here. (Not really clear what the legal basis for denying the extradition request would be, as described in this post on the International Extradition Blog.) The piece was apparently prompted by Legal Adviser John Bellinger’s comments to reporters earlier this week on the margins of talks with EU counterparts:
“I do think these continuing investigations can harm intelligence cooperation — that’s simply a fact of life,” Bellinger said Wednesday. He also criticized a recent investigation by the European Parliament into CIA counterterrorism operations, calling the legislature’s findings “unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair.”
I don’t know. I assume US officials are now taking these contingencies into account as they plan out future intelligence operations.
Although the Italian government has not made a final decision on whether to ask the United States to extradite the defendants,
I’m going to guess they plan on wringing a few arms to make sure there’s no extradition request.
In the event it does occur, I imagine it will be rejected under the justification of being a purely political prosecution.