The Mystery of the Triangle of Refugee Law, Terrorism Law and Extradition Law: What to Do When a Refugee Is Also an Extraditable Terrorist?

Abstract

How should a State act in order to be consistent with its international obligations in case a person with refugee status in its territory is required for extradition under terrorism charges? Part I.A of this article lays out the case of Walter Chavez — an alleged MRTA member granted refuge in Bolivia, whose extradition was recently denied, in spite of the terrorism charges still pending against him in Peru. Part I.B presents a case involving Colombia and Ecuador over two alleged FARC members granted refugee status in Nicaragua, who have recently been requested for extradition also under terrorism charges. Part I.C sets out the potential relevance for the U.S., Canada and the European Union that these issues of international law application may entail, in view of growing bilateral relations of some Latin American countries with Iran. In the backdrop of these cases, part II addresses the main issue of this article through presenting the current status of international law with special attention on the interaction of refugee, terrorism and extradition treaties, in order to provide general answers to three broad questions. First, part II.A tries to answer the question of what should States do when a refugee may actually be a terrorist, by resorting mainly to the UNHCR Guidelines for the application of the exclusion clauses of article 1F of the 1951 Convention. Second, part II.B deals with the question of how to define terrorism-related offenses by presenting some basic considerations about the current multilateral international conventions that address the issue. And third, part II.C is dedicated to the issue of how to apply extradition law in consistency with both refugee and terrorism law, by going through some basic provisions present in most extradition treaties. The paper concludes that the correct application of international Refugee law, Terrorism law and Extradition law, may never lead to the curtailing of the legitimate purposes of any of these bodies of rules, as they can be read in consistence with the universal preeminence of human rights. International cooperation in seeking to avoid the grave human rights violations terrorism-related offenses cause can be properly attained while firmly enforcing the fundamental right of the persecuted individual to be granted asylum. Indeed, the international law obligations entailed in this triangular relationship set the basic stage of principles and rules of application to impede abuses to the institution of asylum and the curtailing of human rights and ius cogens violations under the broad umbrella of the fight against terrorism.