The US government supported India’s request to extradite Tahawwur Rana, a suspect in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The government called upon the top US court to reject “the petition for a writ of certiorari” submitted by Rana.
Rana, a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, recently petitioned the Supreme Court to block his extradition. The US Solicitor General, Elizabeth B. Prelogar, filed a response on December 16 urging the court to deny the petition.
Rana had previously appealed his extradition in lower courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, but was unsuccessful. “The (India US Extradition) Treaty permits Rana’s extradition,” the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ruled in August.
He then filed a “petition for a writ of certiorari” with the Supreme Court on November 13. This petition represents Rana’s final legal attempt to avoid extradition.
A writ of certiorari is a request to a higher court to review a lower court’s ruling. The term “certiorari” comes from Law Latin, meaning “to be more fully informed.”
Rana’s “petition for a writ of certiorari to review the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit” contends that he was previously tried and cleared in the federal court of Northern District of Illinois (Chicago) regarding the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. His petition states, “India now seeks to extradite him for trial on charges based on the identical conduct at issue in the Chicago case.”
However, Prelogar argued that Rana is not exempt from extradition. She contends that the Indian charges against Rana are not fully identical to the charges he faced in a US federal court in Chicago. “The government does not concede that all of the conduct on which India seeks extradition was covered by the government’s prosecution in this case. For example, India’s forgery charges are based in part on conduct that was not charged in the United States: petitioner’s use of false information in an application to formally open a branch office of the Immigration Law Centre submitted to the Reserve Bank of India,” she said as quoted by news agency PTI.
She further explained that the prior US case against Rana, which resulted in an acquittal on some charges, does not cover all the conduct India intends to prosecute. “It is not clear that the jury’s verdict in this case – which involves conspiracy charges and was somewhat difficult to parse – means that he has been ‘convicted or acquitted’ on all of the specific conduct that India has charged.”