File No. 21558/10.
The Secretary of State to Ambassador Straus.
Washington, November 8, 1909.
Sir: The department has received your No. 19 of the 18th ultimo, requesting further instructions in the matter of the desired extradition from Egypt of Memar Rizk.
Regarding your inquiry as to whether or not it would be advisable at this time further to press upon the attention of the Ottoman Porte the question of the recognition of the extradition treaty of 1874, it should be said that the department regards that matter as definitively settled so far as Turkey is concerned, not only because of the attitude taken by this Government in 1886 (see I Moore on Extradition, p. 102; also p. 815, where your own report on the matter is to be found); but also because, as set forth in department’s cable to you of October 15, the Turkish Government has itself specifically recognized the validity of the treaty by requesting the extradition under it of a fugitive from its justice, who was supposed to have taken refuge in this country.
The department was, and is, however, anxious to secure from Turkey a recognition that the treaty is also applicable to Egypt, and the Porte’s statement that the treaty is valid in Egypt if valid in Turkey is hardly as unequivocal a statement upon this point as the department had hoped to secure. The department would therefore be pleased if you could secure from the Porte an unqualified statement that the treaty is in force in Egypt, though it does not desire you to press this matter further than it would seem to you, under all the circumstances of the case, was at this time wise and desirable.
The department has received and answered your cables regarding the nationality of the person who was alleged to have been murdered by Rizk, and regarding the statement of the Ottoman Porte that it would recommend to the Egyptian Government that it should punish Rizk in Egypt for a crime committed by him in the United States.
I am, etc.,