25907
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
זויייייוייזי
C.O.8
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.885
16 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
No. 190.
(STRAITS SETTLEMENTS.)
COLONIAL OFFICE to LAW OFFICERS.
[Mutual surrender of fugitive criminals between the Straits Settlements and the neighbouring Protected States, and between the Protected States themselves.]
GENTLEMEN,
Downing Street,
7th September, 1914.
I AM directed by Mr. Secretary Harcourt to acknowledge the receipt of report of the 15th of July last.*
your
2. In connection with the second and subsequent paragraphs of that report I am to refer you to the letter from this Department to your predecessors of the 9th of August, 1910, and to their report of the 12th of April, 1911,† in answer to that letter. In the letter of the 9th August, 1910, it was suggested that it might be advisable to introduce a Bill in the Imperial Parliament amending the Fugitive Offenders Act by making it capable of extension by Order in Council to Protected States with which an agreement might be made for the mutual rendition of fugitive criminals under the provisions of that Act. predecessors advised that an Act should be introduced in the Imperial Legislature In reply to this suggestion your amending the Fugitive Offenders Act and enabling it to be applied to the surrender of fugitive offenders both between the Straits Setttlements and the Protected States or between the several Protected States inter se, and suggested that this could be done by adding after the word "jurisdiction," in Section 36 of the Act, some such words as or any place or group of places over which His Majesty extends his tection"; that an Order in Council under the amended section could then direct pro- that the Act should apply to the Protected States as therein mentioned. In the second paragraph of the same report, your predecessors advised that, since the Pro- tected States did not recognise British law, it would be further necessary for the ruler of each Protected State to make appropriate Enactment, providing for the arrest, transport, and detention of fugitive offenders as far as the local law was concerned.
3. As stated in the letter from this Department of the 25th of March, 1914,‡ the Agreement, draft Enactment, and draft Order in Council, copies of which were enclosed in that letter, were intended to carry out the procedure advised in the report of the 12th April. 1911. With this intention all provisions in the draft Enactment not referring to the arrest, transport, and detention of fugitive offenders were, by the red ink amendments to which your attention was drawn in the said letter, deleted from the draft Enactment as submitted to the Secretary of State by the High Commissioner of the Malay States.
4. With reference to the question of the sufficiency of the draft Enactment in its amended form, I am to call your attention to the form of the amendment which it is proposed to make in Section 36 of the Fugitive Offenders Act, and to the form of the draft Order in Council to be made under the section so amended.
The effect of Section 36 as amended and the Order in Council to be made there- under will be to direct that the Act shall apply as if the Protected States were British possessions, and the Order in Council will also make the alterations in the wording of the Act necessary to make it applicable to the local conditions of the States.
5. Mr. Harcourt is advised that when that has been done it will be difficult to construe the Order in Council in any other manner than actually bringing the Act into force in the States themselves, and. further, that it might not be possible to construe the Act as applicable to fugitive offenders apprehended and committed in a Protected State unless the acts of apprehension, commitment, &c., could also be held to have taken place under the Act. Mr. Harcourt agrees that the Malay States must in ordinary circumstances be regarded as outside the ambit of British statute law, but the procedure which has been adopted, and which, as it appears to Mr. Harcourt, is consistent with the advice contained in the report of your pre- decessors to which reference has been made, is founded on the assumption that the
(3890-2.) Wt. 124-872.
* Law Odicers' Opinions, Vol. VII, No. 175.
† Law Officers' Opinions, Vol. VII, No. 138.
t See Law Officers' Opinions, Vol. VII., No, 175. 25. 315 D&S G. 1.
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