On March 15, Justice Minister Anne McLellan said a...

On March 15, Justice Minister Anne McLellan said a Supreme Court order to seek a guarantee for Burns and Rafay could rob her of the "ministerial discretion" she has to weigh each case on its own merit. "The decision to extradite is a government to government decision and therefore it is ultimately my responsibility to determine whether I will extradite or not," she said. On March 22, at a public hearing the Supreme Court considered whether Canada, which bans the death penalty, should be forced to seek guarantees that its citizens will not be executed when they are sent to other countries to face murder charges. Lawyers for Rafay argued that failure to seek guarantees would shock the Canadian conscience and would violate accepted standards of the international community of Western countries. "The respondent is not arguing that he should not face justice, but merely that the minister must act to prevent extinction of his life," Rafay's lawyers said in a court submission. Amnesty International was an intervenor in the case and maintained that Canada is one of the only Western countries to routinely return murder suspects to the United States without seeking a guarantee against execution. The public hearing of the Supreme Court was also attended by a delegation from the Italian Senate, led by Senator Rino Cirami, which on the initiative of Hands off Cain was sent to represent the Committee of Parliamentarians for the Abolition of the Death Penalty and to explain Italian policy on extradition in capital cases, citing as examples Pietro Venezia and Abdullah Ocalan, whom Italy refused to extradite to the U.S. and Turkey respectively, as they still retain the death penalty. Due to the retirement of two Supreme Court judges, another public hearing on the Burns and Rafay case will be held in March 2000.