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Comment by kirykl | Hacker News Reader

Its an allegation not a conviction. It’s not like anyone from China’s going to appear in US court to make a defense.

What if China says “we’re sending you a plane with the four individuals you are after. We insist on their innocence and want to see a fair and public trial”

Then DOJ would have to reveal their sources, wouldn’t they?

If Iran made such an accusation against 4 NSA employees, that were actually innocent, do you think that those 4 people would ever be handcuffed, and put on a flight to Iran?

Of course not, that would be idiotic, and horrible for morale. You don't give your own people up, regardless of whether or not they are innocent or guilty.

As such, this is a spherical cow thought experiment. To address it - it's quite likely that the sources would not be revealed in an open trial, due to the catch-all of national security. For a helping of double irony, the sources are likely the product of... Espionage (Digital or otherwise).

Sure, but the US can actually try foreign military officers somewhat fairly. Almost no country in the world can accomplish that, other than perhaps the UK and Canada.

How about Germany, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, etc?

Why would you claim that? If anyone can try them fairly, that would be a neutral third party, maybe Switzerland.

Also consider how US treats 'threats to national security' - Chelsea manning, indefinite detention in Guantanamo bay, etc.

It doesn't matter if the trial is going to be fair or not. Doing this is the worst kind of betrayal that a military can commit against a soldier.

This is also why the US is not even a signatory of the ICC. It, by principle, opposes the sheer notion of Americans facing international trials for war crimes, even in impartial, third party courts. There's no way in hell it would extradite its spies to face trials for computer crimes.

It's arguments for not participating in the ICC are that the trials would be political, and not impartial. That's a stick with two ends.

Given that almost none have ever tried, what would you base your opinion on. As in, what facts?

Or drop charges. This is clearly a what-if that's been taken into account, the implication being that these people either are in fact military intelligence or otherwise very valuable, or don't exist at all.

What they've done in the past [0], is continually to delay the actual trial. The idea is to force the defendants either to avoid setting foot in the jurisdiction or to spend their entire net worth on defense attorneys.

[0] https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2019/09/16/were-now-o...

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