dvx:

Magnifico:

However, are you suggesting that if the Bush administration when through with their assassination plan in Germany, Germany would have seen it as an act of war?

No I'm not, merely that they would be within historical precedent if the chose to do so.

I would argue that since the murder of Franz Ferdinand was done by a terrorist organisation with headquarters in the other country, not by a state agency, it is a bad example.

A better example might be the alledged assassination attempt on Bush senior, which was part of the massive list of reasons for the Iraq war:

Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq

Whereas the current Iraqi regime has demonstrated its continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States, including by attempting in 1993 to assassinate former President Bush and by firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council;

Or the sinking of US ships used as motivating the US entry into WW1:

Woodrow Wilson Urges Congress to Declare War on Germany - Wikisource

Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.

It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way.

I have no problem with blocking an extradition request made by a country where the defendant would be facing the death penalty.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 20 says "everyone is equal before the law."

Now this does not seem to be the case for certain privileged states, such as Germany, within the EU. A citizen of a privileged state can commit crimes in one state and then escape to their the safe haven.

Personally, I do not understand how a justice system can work in the EU if extraditions are blocked. I think either EU member states trust the justice systems in their fellow EU states, or they don't.

If some states protect their citizens from prosecution by other states, when other states do not, how is this equality?

And here:

The Germans found no grounds in which they could prosecute, Darkazanli. Spain thought otherwise, but Germany decided that Spain would not allow their citizen to extradited to another EU state. The determination not to extradite was made by bureaucrats outside of the courtroom.

And while this is done to defend a state's citizens against "dead laws", I think it is a loophole that can be exploited. As an interested outsider, I would rather see the EU explicitly state what and what are not extraditable crimes, ruling out such "dead laws" as blasphemy, than leaving such a loophole in place.

Again this is a matter of perspective. My argument is based on what I see as working in the United States where one state will normally extradite a wanted person to another state. There is 'trust' that justice will be done between the states of the American union. Without the trust between EU states that another state will mete justice fairly and accordingly, then I do not see how the EU legal system can work well. But then, maybe that is the point.

America's prisons are full.