Extradition and State Responsibilities on the Protection of Rights of Requested Persons

Abstract

In recent time, the world has experienced an unprecedented upsurge of emerging national, transnational and international crimes perpetrated by individuals and groups. Perpetrators of these crimes sometimes escape to another country and evade immediate arrest, detention, prosecution, conviction, sentence and/ or punishment. Nonetheless, such individuals are sometimes formally surrendered to the requesting state, where the crimes were committed, upon request made to the requested state for their return through extradition in accordance with extradition laws. These laws place responsibilities on the requesting and requested states regarding the protection of rights of requested persons. This work examines state responsibilities for the protection of rights of requested persons. Using the doctrinal methodology, this work found that many state parties typically fail in their responsibilities to protect the rights of requested persons, which results in the violation of those rights. The work recommends strengthening of extradition laws on the protection of rights of requested persons by state parties; provision of clear penalties on involved states; establishment and strengthening of a realistic enforcement mechanism against involved states and provision of compensation for requested persons where their rights are violated.