CO129-535-3 Nguyen ai Quoc- request for extradition to Indo-China by French authorities 29-6-1931 - 26-1-1932 — Page 62

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for which the penalty is death it is difficult to understand the statement that there is no

ground on which his extradition could be applied

for. If the case is one in which extradition

is possible, it would certainly be wrong to make

use of the power of deportation in order to get

the man into French hands, without extradition

proceedings having taken place, but at present we

have no idea what the facts in this respect are.

It seems to us that our decision must depend

a good deal on what the situation is in this regard,

and we are inclined to think that the best thing

to do would be to send for the Counsellor of the

French Embassy and explain to him what the position

is as regards the legal proceedings, and tell him

quite frankly that before deciding what steps to

take we should like to know what the French

Government propose to do with Quoc if they get

hold of him, and in particular, whether anything

in the nature of criminal proceedings against him

is contemplated, explaining that, if it is, the

proper course would seem to be an application for

/extradition