US gov’t: Courts can’t decide on nation-to-nation communications

THE US Government said that the fishermen, through their suit, are challenging the process of enforcing the convention and the diplomatic negotiations between the US and Jamaica about their detention.

The documents reveal that it took Jamaica 25 days to consent to the men’s prosecution in the US.

The diplomatic options potentially available during the first detention such as whether Jamaica could have attempted through diplomacy to specify the conditions of the detention or could have taken over the detention itself, according to the US Government, are not properly before the court.

Further, under the terms of the treaties, diplomatic solutions are available to settle disputes, including disputes about “any loss or injury” and “any improper or unreasonable action” taken by a party pursuant to the bilateral agreement.

The US Government has also rejected the position that the United States should have brought the men to a US shore during the Jamaican Government’s multi-week period of diplomatic deliberation.

AN IMPROPER INFRINGEMENT

It said that such inquiry by the court would be an improper infringement into matters constitutionally committed to the political powers, especially as bringing the four Jamaicans into US territory without the permission of Jamaica could have been a diplomatic offence to a Caribbean state.

The US Government asserts that it is not for the court to decide how the nation-to-nation communications and decisionmaking should have happened in this case.

The five men were detained after the Jamaican Government granted a waiver of jurisdiction to the US Coast Guard under a 1997 agreement between the two countries, commonly referred to as the Shiprider Agreement.

The original agreement, which represents cooperation between the countries’ anti-drug trafficking laws, did not allow US authorities to detain Jamaican nationals encountered at sea, but a 2016 amendment to Section 20 (Subsection 2) of Jamaica’s Maritime Drug Trafficking (Suppression) Act, which explicitly barred the US Coast Guard from detaining them, was removed.