The Magna Carta gets a visa

One strange manifestation of King George's interpretation of the Land of the Free is a circumstance in which a foreign citizen has more rights in the USA than an American citizen. Consider for instance the conditions attached to the extradition of UK citizen Haroon Rashid Aswat, wanted in the USA on charges of running a terrorist training camp in Oregon:

[Judge] Workman said the court [Bow Street Magistrates] had received a diplomatic note from the US Embassy in London last month.

The note gave assurances that Mr Aswat would be "prosecuted before a federal court in accordance with the full panoply of rights and protections that would otherwise be provided to a defendant facing similar charges".

And it said that the Briton would not be prosecuted by a military commission or treated as an enemy combatant.

Mr Workman said: "Whilst the note does not provide any personal protection to this defendant I am satisfied that it does bind the government of the United States of America which in these terms includes the president."

On its face, Aswat is thus better off than American citizen Jose Padilla, detained without charge for 3.5 years as an enemy combatant before being charged on unrelated criminal charges. But there remain risks for Mr Aswat, as his legal team argues. First, given how out-of-the-loop the London embassy has been recently, it's not clear how much any statement from them binds the government in Washington. And since Dubya has argued that the GWOT exempts him from, like, actual laws passed by Congress, a diplomatic note may not stand much chance at all.