Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and the Takedown of the Prince of Marbella

During the 1920s, the United States experienced a rash of “interstate” bank heists, in which stickup men with automobiles would rob a bank in one state before fleeing to another. Because holding up a bank was not a federal crime until 1934, the local authorities in Kansas, say, were not authorized to pursue a suspect who crossed state lines into Missouri. Nearly a century later, sophisticated international criminals enjoy a similar advantage.  International law is generally weak, and Interpol, which has no arresting power, is little more than a clearing house for warrants which individual nations may elect not to enforce. As Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy, has observed, sovereignty is a great advantage for criminals, terrorists, and other bad actors -- and a conspicuous disadvantage for law enforcement. 

But since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, new statutes have enhanced the power of “extraterritorial jurisdiction,” enabling aggressive law enforcement agencies to investigate and try suspects for crimes committed outside the United States.

One notable recent case involved a complex international sting concocted by the DEA to capture a notoriously uncatchable international arms trafficker and terrorist financier, a flamboyant Syrian named Monzer al-Kassar, who lived openly in the south of Spain and was known as the Prince of Marbella. The New Yorker recently published an article I wrote about the clever strategies that al-Kassar used to remain at large for decades, and the extraordinary international law enforcement operation that eventually brought him down. 

The same DEA team that captured al-Kassar went on to catch the notorious Tajik gun runner Victor Bout the following year -- using the exact same sting. Bout has not yet been turned over to the United States -- Russia is leaning hard on the government in Thailand, where he was arrested, to prevent his extradition. (American prosecutors filed additional charges against Bout last week.)  

But taken together these cases represent a promising model for using extraterritorial jurisdiction to bring heretofore untouchable international criminals to justice.

Here's the New Yorker article, "The Trafficker:The Decades-long Battle to Catch an International Arms Broker," which has just become available on-line. 

And here is a neat web-only feature: excerpts from the actual video, surreptitiously taken by undercover DEA informants, in which al-Kassar agrees to sell surface-to-air missiles and other weapons to the FARC. This video formed the basis of the conspiracy charges on which al-Kassar was ultimately convicted in a New York federal court. 

Comments

[captive insurance company]

Why wasn't it a federal crime until then? What changed to turn it into a federal crime? Seems weird that it'd have only changed in 70 somethin years ago...