Snowdengate: Hong Kong’s Precedence of Refusing America’s Extradition Requests

Ex-CIA agent Snowden’s stay in Hong Kong is stimulating different guesses as to the end of his story. If the American government officially pursues extradition, matters will become more complicated because of various legal and diplomatic issues. Some critics believe that, according to the United States-Hong Kong Extradition Treaty, Snowden, who used his computer illegally, should be extradited to the United States. But others reckon that the Hong Kong government should reject the demand from the United States on the basis of sensitive political issues and social benefits involved in the incident. Still others believe that Beijing should interfere in the affair as soon as possible, since this incident involves matters of diplomacy. But whatever we would like to conjecture, we should first study an inconspicuous case from five years ago, when the United States demanded that the Hong Kong government extradite an Iranian, Yousef Boushvash — a request that ended in vain.

An “Individual Case” of Iranians Entering Hong Kong

After 9/11, the United States established the Department of Homeland Security council to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists. This aim became one of most important anti-terrorist strategies of the United States government. The extent of their concerns rapidly spread to other states that the United States had identified as high-risk states, for example, Iran. The Department of Homeland Security often made requests to different states to extradite Iranians, claiming that these people were Iranian spies who helped transport weapons to the Iranian government or other terrorist organizations that the United States was targeting. Hong Kong has an extradition agreement with the United States. At the same time, because Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, it maintains good relations with Iran on the surface; however, there are plentiful stories of the hassles endured by Iranians arriving or leaving Hong Kong. For example, an Iranian scholar came to Hong Kong to attend an academic conference but was detained at the airport when he was leaving until some upper-level officials clarified the “misunderstandings.”

On October 29, 2007, according to the information provided by the United States and the provisional order of arrest, an Iranian, Yousef Boushvash, was arrested in Hong Kong. One month later, the United States officially demanded his extradition because he was an Iranian spy. Between 2004 and 2007, he was alleged to have trafficked in weapons from the United States through Dubai and Bangkok, including the parts of F-14 warplanes, violating the Arms Export Control Act of the U.S. government. In addition, he was alleged to have committed crimes such as money laundering and mail fraud, crimes typically committed by spies.

Hong Kong is Used as Beijing’s ‘White Gloves’ for International Relations

Hong Kong originally was going to respond to the American government’s demands by scheduling an extradition hearing according to the legal procedures. The hearing, originally scheduled for April 14, 2008, was interrupted by the unconditional release of the Iranian on April 11, 2008, and the Hong Kong government only informed the United States government one day before the announcement. The person disappeared after his release, which means that Hong Kong did not even use its legal procedures at all. According to diplomatic sources, the Iranian government was directly communicating with Beijing, on the one hand proving that this person belonged to the Iranian government, on the other hand arguing that the United States government was setting a trap for him. Finally, Beijing signaled to the Hong Kong government that this case was of diplomatic importance, which exceeded the capacity of Hong Kong’s government. Therefore, they suggested to the Hong Kong government that it release him so that he could leave Hong Kong instead of being detained by the labyrinth of legal procedures.

What’s worth noticing is that the aforementioned explanation was never confirmed: The Beijing government has never made any open comments about the case. According to the United States-Hong Kong Extradition Treaty, Beijing will handle incidents that involve diplomatic affairs with a national defense interest, whereas in areas that do not involve national importance, neither the American nor Hong Kong government has to extradite political criminals or those involving significant public interests. But the term “political criminals” is far too vague; hence each case needs to be examined accordingly by the courts. In other words, there are three ways that Beijing influences the results of the extradition: first, via a public announcement claiming that the case is of national defense matters and hence will be handled by the government; secondly, by providing legal references to Hong Kong courts on the verdict of “political criminals”; and, lastly, by suggesting to Hong Kong that it let the parties leave Hong Kong voluntarily or even to expel him from Hong Kong. On any public occasion, the sentence, “I cannot comment on individual cases,” suffices to explain everything.

Britain Refused to Extradite Ex-Iranian Ambassador to the United States

In reality, in terms of the Iranian question, there exist quite a number of nations and areas who refuse extradition despite pre-existing extradition agreements with the United States. Also in 2008, a high-ranking Iranian air force officer was arrested in Thailand by request of the United States; his charges were also smuggling arms and weapons. Later, the Iranian government communicated with the Thai government, pointing out that this person would be severely tortured once he was extradited to the United States. In the end, preferring three-party cooperation, the Thai court quickly rejected the extradition.

The more famous incident is the case of Nosratollah Tajik, the ex-Iranian ambassador in Jordan. He was accused by the United States of weapons trading, which led to his arrest in Britain. The courts in London spent a long time handling this case and eventually refused the American government’s request. Because of the individual’s high rank, the case dragged on, troubling the courts for six long years, during which he was kept under house arrest. He was only permitted to return to Iran in December 2012. The United States is capable of negotiating with other nations on a diplomatic level — practically speaking, it cannot do anything more — but it is ultimately up to each government to decide for itself. That ex-ambassador was sent back to his home country, and the released Iranian in Hong Kong has been missing in action ever since. So how will these cases shed light on our “Snowdengate” incident?