On Monday, a U.S. Federal District Court Judge in Delaware sentenced Amir Hossein Ardebili, who was the subject of this earlier post on Export Law Blog, to five years in prison, less time served and credit for good behavior, based on Ardebili’s guilty plea to U.S. charges arising out of attempted exports of military goods to Iran. During Ardebili’s statement at the sentencing hearing, he frequently burst into tears, even at one point crying so much that a break was taken.

Iran immediately denounced the sentence and announced that it would try three American hikers that wandered into Iran last summer, implicitly linking Ardebili’s fate to that of the three U.S. hikers now held in Iranian prisons According to an Iranian press agency, Iran Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ramin Mehmanparast, said that the jail sentence handed down yesterday was “illegal.” Tehran has also argued that under international law officials in Georgia were obliged to return Ardebili to Iran rather than giving him to U.S. agents, reports Iran’s Press TV network.

Iran’s claim of a requirement to return Ardebili under international law is not quite on the mark since there really isn’t such a recognized right in extradition matters. As generally understood, international law holds that no country is obliged to extradite anyone. This understanding of international law explains why there are a hundreds of bilateral extradition treaties, although the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Georgia. That doesn’t mean that a country, such as Georgia, cannot voluntarily hand over someone in the absence of a treaty. However, that is normally only done after a representation of reciprocal treatment by the country requesting extradition.

U.S. law does permit, in limited circumstances, extradition from the United States in the absence of a treaty with the country requesting extradition. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3181(b) the U.S. will allow such extradition from the United States of foreign persons but only for violent crimes that are not deemed political offenses. Certainly the crime that Ardebili was alleged to have committed was not a violent crime and so an extradition of a person from the U.S. on export charges by a country without an extradition treaty would be illegal under U.S. law. This means that the U.S. couldn’t really make a commitment of reciprocal treatment to Georgia to support its request for a non-treaty extradition of Ardebili. If the situation were reversed, U.S. law would actually prohibit the extradition

The problem created here is that the shaky grounds for U.S. jurisdiction over Ardebili detract from our own country’s argument that Iran should return the hikers. After all, Iran’s claim of jurisdiction to hold the hikers is stronger than the U.S. claim of jurisdiction over Ardebili even if Iran’s substantive claim that the hikers broke the law is dubious. After all, the hikers were captured in Iran whereas Ardebili was lured into Georgia and arrested there.

ABOVE: Amir Ardebili captured on
surveillance video in Tbilsi, Georgia

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Amir Hossein Ardebili, an Iranian national, engaged in extensive negotiations from Iran and apparently on behalf of the Iranian government to export defense items from the United States to Iran. The U.S. companies, however, were sting operations set up by U.S. undercover agents. When the agents lured Ardebili from Iran to Tbilsi, Georgia, they arrested him in October 2007 and, seemingly with the cooperation of Georgian authorities, brought him back to the United States where he was secretly imprisoned and held under a sealed indictment.

Ardebili has pleaded guilty to charges, among other things, that he violated the United States Arms Export Control Act. In preparation for his sentencing on December 14, some of the sealed documents, including a redacted version of the indictment have been unsealed. Prior to the unsealing, the identity of the city where Ardebili was snatched had been undisclosed but it’s now clear that, as had been rumored, Ardebili had traveled to Georgia to meet with the agents.

The government’s sentencing memorandum, in an effort to obtain the maximum term of imprisonment possible, provides further details of the undercover investigation. Significantly, the memo stresses that the Ardebili was engaged in procurement activities for his sole customer, the government of Iran, which was seeking the items because it believed it was going to go to war with the United States.

Ardebili’s attorney has filed a motion for a downward variance from the sentencing guidelines, arguing that the 22 months already served in solitary confinement caused Ardebili to become clinically depressed. The motion further noted that all of Ardebili’s activities were legal in Iran, where they took place, and that he was acting “indirectly on behalf of the Government of Iran.”

What are we to make of the fact here that the defendant was acting in Iran on behalf of the Iranian government and was later taken by U.S. agents from Georgia to stand trial in the United States? After the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Alvarez-Machain, 504 U.S. 655 (1992), abduction of defendants from foreign countries in order to bring them to the United States to stand trial is legal. The doctrine of functional sovereign immunity from prosecution for acts taken on behalf of foreign governments is basically confined to high officials of those countries. And the U.S. takes the controversial position that it has criminal jurisdiction over anyone located in foreign countries trying to export items from the United States.

Of course, if the shoe were on the other foot, if an American businessman had been abducted by Iranian agents from a hotel in, say, Russia and then secretly held in solitary confinement for two years in Iran, you can bet your you-know-what that we would be screaming bloody murder. I am not a fan of the Government of Iran or its nuclear aspirations, but we really have to understand that if we employ extraordinary means such as were employed here then we will have no cause to complain when those same methods are used against U.S. citizens abroad.

Here is some of the surveillance video of the meeting between the U.S. agents and Ardebili in Georgia:

ABOVE: M. Jacques
Monsieur

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Monsieur Jacques Monsieur, international arms dealer and man of mystery who, I previously reported, once tried to excuse his arms dealing by claiming to be working for U.S. and French intelligence services, pleaded guilty today in a federal court in Mobile to charges that he had illegally attempted to export aircraft parts to Iran. Amazingly neither the CIA nor it’s French counterpart the DST rode into the courtroom at the last minute to save Mr. Monsieur.

According to an article in the Mobile Press Register, the plea agreement offers Monsieur a chance to reduce his penalty by providing helpful information in his own case and others. It may well be the case that the U.S. is more interested in Monsieur’s Iranian contacts than in Monsieur himself.

In my original post on Monsieur Monsieur, I expressed more than a small amount of skepticism that Monsieur would, during the middle of a deal to export jet engines from New York to Iran, casually show up in New York where he could be, and was, arrested by U.S. officials. A commenter on my original post says that “a little birdie” told him that Monsieur was nabbed in Panama by U.S. officials then taken to New York for his arrest, a credible, if still unverified, story.

Back in 2007, I discussed in two posts (here and here) a criminal complaint filed against Netherlands-based Aviation Services International, B.V., and its owner Rob Kraaipoel, a citizen and resident of the Netherlands. The criminal complaint accused Kraaipoel and his company of exporting U.S.-origin items from the Netherlands to Iran without required U.S. licenses. Given the absence of any contacts by Aviation Services and Kraaipoel with the United States, I stated that the U.S.-origin of the goods was not a sufficient basis for criminal jurisdiction over the two Dutch entities and that an extradition request might not be viewed favorably by Dutch courts. A temporary denial order was later put in place by the Bureau of Industry and Security (“BIS”) against Kraaipoel and his company. That order forbade U.S. entities from exporting any items to Kraaipoel or Aviation Services or participating in any exports to them. And that, I thought, would be the end of the matter.

So I was more than a little surprised to read that Kraaipoel appeared last week before a federal judge here in D.C. entering a plea of guilty, both individually and on behalf of Aviation Services, to charges arising from his exports of U.S.-origin goods from the Netherlands to Iran. Had he foolishly planned a vacation to Disneyland and gotten nabbed at an airport in the United States? Had a Dutch judge actually granted a motion for extradition in this matter? No, according to the government’s motion to quash an arrest warrant issued against Kraaipoel in 2007, Kraaipoel had retained U.S. counsel and had voluntarily agreed to fly to the United States to face the music.

Why on earth would he do that? The plea agreement, after the agreed downward adjustments from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, calls for a penalty of 46 to 57 months in jail. Of course, we can only speculate here, but it seems that several factors might be in play. Even if a Dutch court was unlikely to entertain an extradition motion, law enforcement authorities in other jurisdictions might enforce the warrant at the request of the United States. Think Roman Polanski. This has been done in at least one export case where a U.K. resident was arrested by Polish authorities based on a U.S. arrest warrant. The BIS denial order would also have probably been hurting Kraaipoel’s business, but the last temporary denial order expired in April 2009, and Kraaipoel and his company are not currently on the Denied Parties List. Even if more TDOs are imposed, nothing in a guilty plea would motivate BIS to lift a denial order but rather would serve more as a basis to extend any existing denial order.

Oddly Kraaipoel was allowed to return to the Netherlands after entering his plea and no date for sentencing was set. An AP report quoted Kraaipoel’s attorney as saying that the defendants were hoping for a sentence of probation only in light of anticipated cooperation with prosecutors. The plea agreement indeed provides that Kraaipoel would be released pending sentencing in light of his anticipated cooperation in further investigations. And it further states provides that in the event that Kraaipoel provides “substantial assistance,” the government would move that the defendant be allowed to argue for a sentence with a lesser period of incarceration. The proffer of proof indicates that Kraaipoel was acting in concert with Iranian individuals operating in Cyprus and the U.A.E. Sounds like they might be the next targets of this investigation.