Alfred Heinz Reumayr
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Alfred Heinz Reumayr of New Westminster, British Columbia, was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on August 18, 1999 for plotting to blow up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Reumayr was arrested in Canada on Canadian charges since all acts were committed on Canadian soil. Because the Government knew that the plan would never be completed and since there was substantial evidence that the basis of the plot was really to write a book, the Canadians offered Reumayr a plea to ten years, and he would have been parole eligible in three. When he declined to accept the deal, the Canadian government allowed the United States to proceed with extradition. He was charged with six counts of explosive-related offenses in New Mexico even though the scheme was allegedly going to be carried out in Alaska. His arrest was supposedly the culmination of an 18-month investigation by the RCMP, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the U.S. Customs Service, but the reality is that the entire case stemmed on an informant who concocted the scheme in the first place. The informant met Reumayr while in prison. The plan was never to be carried out and involved a scheme to buy options on oil futures, but Reumayr never even had a futures account. Rather, the plan was reality the beginnings of a book. The informant's plan called for 14 bombs to be detonated along the pipeline on 1 January 2000. Reumayr spent six years in a Canadian pretrial unit pending extradition to the United States. The Canadian courts' decision in his case is an example of how a bad case makes bad law. The British Columbia Court of Appeals moreless ruled that if any act is a crime in Canada, you can be extradited even if the United States' law is completely different. In other words, if the United States charges you will using a technical device to plan murder, and the evidence shows that you stole a car which is a crime in Canada, you can be extradited even though nothing is similar. The case is a dangerous abuse of the legal systems in two countries: Canada's extradition law which substantially infringes on human rights, and the United States for trying a person in New Mexico when nothing occurred in that district.
