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| Isaac Calderon, international man of mystery |
Many months ago we heard that the UK has requested extradition of a U.S. citizen who caused a traffic accident in which a British women was injured, an event that raised misguided comparisons with the Harry Dunn case.
Finally, this week there was evidence that an actual extradition proceeding is really happening. Specifically, there was an initial hearing in a Houston court in which the defendant appeared and the court heard evidence provided by the UK police force that investigated the accident.
Here's the Sky News story about the court appearance: US soldier admits vaping before crash that left UK nurse unable to walk, extradition documents reveal.
The nonsense starts with the term "soldier." The defendant is reportedly a member of the Texas Army National Guard, which is a one-weekend-a-month-and-two-weeks-a-year kind of thing. (Someone should explain to the UK press that the NG is our equivalent to their Territorial Army.) But the UK press and social media will cling to anything that makes this simple traffic accident by a private U.S. citizen into a machination of the U.S. government, and especially of its covert intelligence world.
Agent Double O Aspergers might seem a very unlikely candidate to be a mastermind of espionage, but for fans of Team Harry Dunn, he'll do.
The nonsense escalates from there, with the terms "Official Secrets Act," "intelligence solider," and "Secret Service" freely sprinkled all over news stories about the case. Ominously, they speculate he might even have been visiting the SAS base in Herefordshire, which suggests he was up to bilateral skullduggery.
As for the real 23 year-old Texan behind all the media nonsense, we learned at the court hearing that he told the UK police he was vaping while driving too fast (70 MPH in a 50), struggled to use an unfamiliar stick shift, and was passing cars despite being perpetually confused by those foreign markings on British roads. He also said he was driving on personal business, and did not have insurance.
I'm still curious about who owned the car. I'm assuming it wasn't a rental, given the lack of insurance.
Well, it doesn't look good for our Texas Guardsman. However, there is still a long legal road to travel before he can be sent back to face UK justice.
Courtesy of the U.S. Justice Department, here's a summary of the process that must be followed before a U.S. to UK extradition can take place:
“During the judicial phase, a court will determine whether the extradition request meets the requirements of the applicable extradition treaty and the law of the requested country. If so, the judicial authority will rule on whether the person may be extradited. If the judicial authority rules that the person may be extradited, the case enters the executive phase, in which an executive authority of the government of the requested country, usually a Prime Minister, Minister of Justice or Minister of Foreign Affairs (for the United States, the appropriate executive authority is the Secretary of State), will determine whether the requested country will surrender the wanted person in extradition.”Both the judicial and the executive phases may be appealed.
All that process might just take us beyond the inauguration of the next POTUS, and hence, the next Secretary of State.
The mystery grows.
