Creative armed robbery defense: Political asylum

Date:July 16, 2007 / year-entry #257
Tags:non-computer
Orig Link:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20070716-01/?p=25993
Comments:    9
Summary:Step 1: Rob bank. Step 2: Flee the country. Step 3: Claim political asylum because the robbery was a form of political protest. It's creative, I have to grant you that. The theory is that Canadian law prohibits extradition for political crimes. Though it's a strange defense to say "If I did it, it was politically motivated." Isn't...

Step 1: Rob bank.

Step 2: Flee the country.

Step 3: Claim political asylum because the robbery was a form of political protest.

It's creative, I have to grant you that. The theory is that Canadian law prohibits extradition for political crimes. Though it's a strange defense to say "If I did it, it was politically motivated." Isn't the whole point of a political protest to openly admit to the crime and invite the authorities to arrest you? If you deny doing it, then it isn't much of a political statement, now, is it?

I mean, you don't hear on the news, "A bomb exploded in ABC today. The radical group DEF said that if they were responsible, it was in retaliation for GHI."

(For more background, you can read a "the story so far" story from the Seattle Times.) In March, the others accused of being involved in the heist pled guilty to armed robbery, which definitely weakens the "We did it as a form of political protest" argument.

And fleeing from house arrest while awaiting an extradition hearing certainly doesn't help either.

Neither does running a stock scam.

Comments (9)
  1. John says:
    July 16, 2007 at 10:29 am

    Obviously he’s just very…enthusiastic…with regards to politics.  Besides, armed robbery and stock scams are not far off the mark of what I expect from our politicians.  Maybe this guy should run for Congress.

  2. fel says:
    July 16, 2007 at 11:51 am

    Haha, he deserves at least a little political asylum for that :P

    Do you happen to type in Dvorak?

  3. matthew says:
    July 16, 2007 at 11:55 am

    Here in the UK, men who hijacked a plane in Afghanistan, flew it to London, were given asylum.

    Strangely, though there were only 9 hijackers plus 25 of their family, of the 170 people on the plane, only 89 returned to Afghanistan; of those left over, 22 were given asylum, and a further 25 were trying for it.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/14/nhijak14.xml

  4. Ian says:
    July 16, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    Here in the UK, men who hijacked a plane in Afghanistan, flew it to London, were given asylum.

    Nitpicker’s corner: re-read the second paragraph in that link!

    After a secret court hearing, immigration adjudicators refused them asylum but ruled that they could not be deported because their human rights would be infringed.

  5. Alan De Smet says:
    July 16, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    To be fair, it is possible engage in political protest secretly.  For example, say one lives in a country where journalists and their families are frequently arrested or executed for criticizing the government.  One might want to fight back with free speech, publishing a leaflet designed to convince people to fight back.  But one might also have a family that one needs to protect, so you’d publish and distribute it anonymously.  If you think your family is at risk, you might flee the country seeking political asylum.  In such a situation, if you were afraid you might be rejected and sent back,  you would have incentive to continue publicly denying that you were the publisher.

    All that said, I don’t realistically see bank robbery as reasonable political protest.

  6. Anony Moose says:
    July 16, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    How else do you expect freedom fighters to fund their pamphlet photocopying?

  7. Burak KALAYCI says:
    July 17, 2007 at 7:43 am

    I’ve clicked all the links, none of the pages had the word ‘protest’. The impression I get after reading all is that this is not only creative but clever as well, and stupid part belongs to the Canadian laws/law makers.

    He doesn’t say he did it as a ‘political protest’, he says, as in your post, ‘his motives were political’. Two very different things if you ask me (not everything politically motivated are forms of political protests).

    He says: "One of the things that the Canadian Extradition Act says is that I cannot be extradited if the reason or the motive for a crime is political". He’s only 21 and he has found a loophole.

    If you deny doing it, then it isn’t much of a political statement, now, is it?

    Well, if this makes him big news and even a blog item at ‘The Old New Thing’, maybe this is a very clever way of being heard. Everybody can make political statements, it counts to be heard.

    Granted the following sounds stupid: "He said the robbery was designed so he could get caught and use the resulting notoriety to expose war crimes by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.". If I were him I’d say that I robbed the bank with the political motive of funding an underground political movement, started by myself :)

    But "Gary Botting, an extradition expert and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington Law School, said the Canadian Extradition Act lists certain types of crimes for which extradition cannot be blocked for political reasons, including murder, sexual assault and kidnapping. Armed bank robbery is not on the list, Botting said, so Sommer should at least get a chance to voice his political rationale."

    So, it seems to me Canadian law makers simply forgot to add the armed robbery exception. Surely a bug.

    I’ve seen similar cases, they didn’t involve Canadian extradition laws but US patents. Clever, creative and evil people, stupid laws…

  8. alex.r. says:
    July 17, 2007 at 9:34 am

    So, it seems to me Canadian law makers simply forgot to add the armed robbery exception.

    All the other crimes on the exclusion list imply direct harm to another individual. I don’t think that bank robbery is nearly as severe as any of the other ones and it’s probably no coincidence that it’s not on the list.

    You have to draw the line somewhere… Now it’s up to people in court to decide whether it was politically motivated or not.  

    In a lot of ways, designing a law seems similar to designing a public API ;)

  9. The Old New Thing says:
    February 13, 2008 at 11:34 am

    Back in the U. S. of A.

Comments are closed.


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