International extradition is one of those processes that always generates a lot of interest. Part of this, I suspect, is the word “international,” but it can’t be denied that there’s something awful (using the old sense of the word, here) about the power of a government to seek out and retrieve an individual from another country. Of course, going through legal processes is far preferable to the alternatives the United States has used in the past, namely, simply kidnapping or tricking the individual. See Alvarez-Machain and Yunis, for example.
According to KY3.com, a Springfield, Missouri man has been located in Winnipeg, Canada, having allegedly fled the country after being indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly attempting to use a minor to engage in sexual conduct and for allegedly receiving child pornography. The article suggests that the individual will attempt to seek asylum in Canada, but assuming that he won’t receive it, extradition will be conducted under the direction of the 1974 bilateral extradition treaty (entering into force on March 22, 1976, and amended on January 11, 1988 and again on January 12, 2001) between the United States and Canada. This treaty provides for extradition on a dual-criminality basis, which means that the charges for which extradition is sought must be crimes in both countries.
