A court in Bangkok this week denied a U.S. request to extradite Jamshid Ghassemi, an Iranian national. Ghassemi had been indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego in 2006 in connection with an alleged attempt by Ghassemi to purchase and export 12 accelerometers from Honeywell International, Inc. to Iran.

The Thai court decision is not public, but the AP obtained a defense filing which asserted three arguments against extradition. First, the defense argued that the extradition papers were not timely filed. Second, it was asserted that Ghassemi would be tortured in the United States if extradited. Finally, the defense pleading relied on the “military offense” exception in the extradition treaty between the United States and Thailand.

It is, of course, somewhat speculative, but it seems likely that the court relied on the “military offense” exception rather than the other two arguments. Under Article 7 of the Extradition Treaty, a request is still timely if the statute of limitations hasn’t expired, which in this case it had not. The torture argument has little factual basis.

But reliance on the military offense exception, set forth in Article 3 of the treaty, seems tenuous as well. The defense argument in support of the exemption was that Ghassemi was a military officer and that he attempted to purchase the accelerometers under orders from his immediate military superior. The military offense exception is widely thought to refer to military offenses such as desertion and mutiny, offenses that are outside the ordinary scope of criminal laws. See, for example, In the Matter of the Requested Extradition of Carlos Guillermo Suarez-Mason, 649 F. Supp. 676 (N.D. Cal. 1988). The Italian Extradition Treaty, Art. V, §3, 35 U.S.T. 3029 (1984), provides a more detailed definition of military offenses as “offenses under military law which are not offenses under ordinary criminal law.” Violations of export laws do not fit readily within such a definition of a “military offense.”

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