File No. 21794/3.
Chargé Schuyler to the Secretary of Stated
St. Petersburg, September 17, 1909.
Sir: I have the honor to inclose herewith copies of notes exchanged between the foreign office and this embassy on the subject of the legalization of the papers in the case of one Izka Saksonoff, whose extradition from the United States is sought by the Russian Government on the charge of complicity in a forgery.
The original request of the foreign office specified complicity in fraud (“complicité dans le crime de fraude”) as the charge upon which the extradition of Saksonoff was demanded. Inasmuch as the prescribed form of legalization for extradition papers includes a statement of the nature of the crime, I felt myself unable to comply with a request for legalization which specified no crime contemplated by the extradition treaty of 1887 between the United States and Russia. I therefore addressed a note to the foreign office in this sense. As the actual wording of the correspondence is alone of importance no translations are inclosed.
To one of the secretaries of the embassy, who returned the documents and pointed out that the case, if within the view of the treaty at all, would seem to fall under section 5 of Article II, a member of the foreign office stated that literal compliance with the embassy’s request would be impossible, as Saksonoff was accused not of having committed but of having been implicated in a forgery, whereas the treaty makes no mention of accomplices or accessories to the enumerated crimes. To this objection, it was suggested that a legalization specifying an accusation of one of the crimes enumerated in the treaty of 1887 would present, for decision by the competent [Page 524] authorities, the essential question whether a charge of complicity in one of the enumerated crimes would be sufficient for the granting of extradition under that treaty. Though, in view of a distinction that is made in the Russian code, the foreign office felt bound, in its renewed request for legalization, to describe the accusation of complicity in a forgery (“complicité dans le crime de faux”), it was nevertheless agreed that the legalization by the embassy should specify forgery as the crime for which extradition was sought; and the legalization in that form was indorsed upon the documents.
I report this matter both in order that the department may be apprised of the circumstances when the Saksonoff case comes before it and for the purpose of securing the instructions of the department upon the questions raised by the case—particularly as to the inclusion within the purport of the treaty of 1887 of those accused (or convicted) as accomplices or accessories to the crimes enumerated.
I have, etc.,