Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Tymoshenko and Interpol

I have been interested in the criminal case that Russian prosecutors say they have against Yulia Tymoshenko. I read the other day that they had a warrant issued and that it would be filed with Interpol. I looked at Interpol's site and there is no information on it yet.

Tymoshenko said a couple of weeks ago that if there was a warrant out with Interpol she would not be meeting in public but would be in hiding.

Not many people know this but Interpol has no international arrest power. They are an information gathering and dissemination organization only. Any warrant that is lodged with them depends on local authorities to make the arrest. In this case, that would mean Ukrainian law enforcement authorities. Extradition proceedings would be what followed.

It would be interesting to see if the authorities here would do it. She does have immunity as a member of Parliament but Russia says that it is not an absolute immunity. They believe that she could legally be extradited to face a trial in Russia. We'll have to see.




1 comment:

Scott W. Clark said...

I think you could be right, Ron.