A Comparative Study on Specialty Principle in Legal Systems of IRAN, A Comparative Study on Specialty Rule in Legal Systems of IRAN and the USA

Extradition of offenders is a formal process by which a person is surrendered by one State to another State. The requirements of positive substantive for extradition are: dual criminality, extraditable offenses and specialty. According to specialty, a person extradited under a treaty shall not be proceeded against, sentenced, detained or subjected to any other restriction of personal liberty in the territory of the requesting State for any offence committed before surrender other than an offence for which extradition was granted or any other offence in respect of which the requested State consents. The philosophy of the existence of the specialty is the protection of the rights of the accused, as well as the providing confidence to the requested State so as to ensure that the requesting State does not abuse its authority. This principle was included in sources of extradition in Legal systems of IRAN, the USA and the United Nations (UN) Model Treaty. Given the philosophy of the existence of this principle in the simultaneous protection of the rights of the accused person and the State, one of the problems with the implementation of the principle is the possibility of abandoning this principle by the state and or the accused; this leads to a question in determining the beneficiaries of this principle. The question is whether the accused person can cite principle despite the withdrawal of the State from it? This paper, by examining documents and case law, concludes that by creating a hierarchy between the interests of the requested State and the accused and prioritizing the interests of the requested State can resolve the conflict between the interests of them, provided that the withdrawal of the requested State does not violate other rights of the accused person.