The Problem of Extradition between Thailand and ASEAN Member States On Case study Death Penalty and Political Offense

Abstract

Providing international cooperation in extradition is a legal cooperation which has been playing a very significant role in crime suppression from the past to present. Even Though, in principles, extradition is not legal obliagation that the requested country has to comply with in extraditing is not legal obligation that the requested country has to comply with in extraditing a fugitive escaping to stay in its territory for the requested country has sovereignty in making decision whether to extradite, however, it is necessary to prevent offender from using such opportunity to escape from justice. Therefore, all countries in the word shall endeavor to cooperate in crime suppression as much as possible. Most countries in the world including member countries of ASEAN, in the past, have arraged to have bilateral treaty and multilateral traty which provide formal extradition between and among them. Futhermore, the contractual parties to the traites have a legal obligation to comply with the conditions specified in usch international traties. However, there are issues of different approaches of the countries to some conditions set forth in the treaties because each country has different rationales in law, political system or different concepts in human rights protection which lead the stipulation of different conditions in each country

There issues of death penalty and political offence are used as case studies here because member countries of ASEAN have different legislation and regimes leading to some conditions were stipulated in some bilateral treaties of which member countries of ASEAN had not been prepared for in the past and it reflected that memeber countries of ASEAN had different concepts in the case studies.

Therefore, in contecxt of forming ASEAN Economic Coummunity (AEC), the preparation to provide mutual assistance in criminal cooperation is a very important matter in order to suppress crime within ASEAN region. ASEAN,s members should provide cooperation among them as much as possible by preparing a multilateral treaty with conditions, as mentioned in the case studies that apply to all 10 countries, Currently, there is no any multilateral traty on extradition among members of ASEAN which is different from the practices of other regions in the world, such as European Union (EU), Economic Community of WEst African States (ECOWAS) which each region has a multilateral traty on extradition among its member countries.