An African priest living in Laredo faces extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which has indicted him for alleged war crimes, thanks to an Aug. 5 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a precedent-setting split decision, the court held that Elizaphan Ntakirutimana can be extradited even though the federal government has not executed a treaty authorizing the extradition. In a brief in Ntakirutimana v. Reno, the priest’s attorney, Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson, argued that Congress has never authorized extradition absent a treaty signed by the president and ratified by two-thirds of the Senate.
