US Attorney-General Janet Reno appealed to her hemispheric counterparts gathered in San Jose, Costa Rica this week to work together to punish Internet crime and bring international fugitives to justice.
Reno, head of the U.S. Justice Department, met under the auspices of the Organization of America States (OAS) with senior law enforcement officials from all over the hemisphere, to further ongoing discussions on co-operation on various aspects of international crime.
Asked the Attorney-General: "If a Brazilian who'd never left Brazil were under investigation for a cyber-crime committed in Brazil, but he used America On Line to do the crime, and all the records are on a computer (server) in Virginia, do you confiscate the computer in Virginia?"
Reno calls for hemispheric legislation that permits criminals to be tried in the country where the crime took place - something that's hard to achieve under current laws, which differ from country to country.
Costa Rica's Justice Minister Monica Nagel, who chaired the three-day meeting, said topics were chosen based on discussion and priorities set last year in Perú. Reno endorsed the experts' recommendations for the hemisphere's governments to teach lawmakers, law enforcers and citizens about cyber-crimes and Internet ethics to avoid unlawful intrusion. Other suggestions include revising and unifying criminal codes to ensure that Internet crimes are well defined and punishable according to local laws.
To make its job easier, the US seeks to create a standardized extradition request form that all the hemisphere's 34 nations will respect, whether or not they have extradition treaties with the U.S. "The US wants to create a master checklist of requirements to make extradition easier from any of our countries," explained José Enrique Castro, of the Costa Rican Attorney General's Office. "But it has recognized that it can't just come up with its own criteria with no respect for our own sovereignties. Rather, the US has presented its form and asked for our suggestions to make it work." Castro said that Costa Rica, which already has an extradition treaty with the US, was broadly in agrrement with the US proposals, except for a provision allowing trials in absentia.
Washington's new strategy for mutual collaboration and respect for hemispheric national sensibilities marks a dramatic change from its more muscular policies of a few years' ago which often resulted in clandestine kidnappings of fugitives.
The three-day meeting was scheduled to end March 3 with participants agreeing to work towards the OAS experts' committee recommendations. The next meeting is slated for 2001 in Trinidad and Tobago.
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