INTERNATIONAL LAW Crook's Tour

For 18 months, Britons on the lam have found complete sanctuary in Ireland -only a three-hour ferry ride away. Because of a yawning legal loophole discovered in 1964, Ireland has become a home away from home for at least three of the Great Train Robbers and more than 100 other British fugitives. Conversely, platoons of Irish crooks have been flitting safely to Britain -all because the two countries wrongly thought that no extradition treaty was needed between them.

Fugitives have sought asylum in other countries ever since the Hebrews' flight from Egypt. But international law still recognizes no right to extradition unless it is authorized by treaty, and such treaties impose rigorous requirements. For one thing, the requesting country must provide a convincing case that the fugitive committed a particular crime within the country's territory. For another, that case is usually governed by the asylum country's rules of evidence and other legal standards. If the fugitive is wanted for something that is not a crime in the asylum country, for example, he is highly unlikely to be surrendered. Most treaties also ban extradition for "political crimes."

Open Door. In the absence of a treaty, extradition is possible by "comity" -courtesy between friendly countries. Britain and Ireland have been swapping one another's fugitives ever since 1922 on the theory that Irish independence in that year did not abrogate laws that set up the exchange as far back as 1848. Each country's courts simply "backed" the other's arrest warrants as if they were domestic documents.

In 1964, however, Britain's House of Lords (acting as the country's highest court) discovered a fatal flaw in an Irish arrest warrant. According to an 1851 British law, the warrant required endorsement by an officer of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the British-paid police force that was replaced in 1922 by Ireland's own Garda Siochana (Peace Guard). Because the old constabulary was defunct, the House of Lords ruled that Irish warrants were no longer valid in Britain.

Weeks later, the Irish Supreme Court indignantly voided another old custom whereby the Garda Siochana backed English warrants in Ireland and "bundled" fugitives over the border to Northern Ireland, where waiting police hustled them off to trial in England. The court called this "a denial of justice" and a violation of the Irish Constitution. Since Britain and Ireland do not check the identity of travelers between them, the door opened wide for crooks to move as freely as commuters.

Empty Coop. Last week the Irish door clanged shut as a new law authorized any of the United Kingdom's 124 police forces to send warrants directly to Dublin, where the commissioner of the Garda Siochana will simply order the wanted man picked up and packed off. In effect, the law restores the pre-1964 system, but with the vital difference that a fugitive claiming Irish citizenship gets a 15-day breathing spell to petition for habeas corpus in an Irish court. A pending British law will send Irish warrants to local British magistrates for endorsement, provide the same 15-day grace period and right of habeas corpus. Both laws will also deny extradition for debtors, political and military offenders, and for crimes that are not indictable in the asylum country.

Ironically, the Irish law was already so well publicized by the time it became effective last week that every major British lamister had long since flown the coop, leaving only about 70 penniless petty crooks to be extradited to Britain -and with glacial calm, British police had neglected to send effective warrants to Ireland for them. Indeed, Britain's own law still lacks the "royal assent" needed to make it official, leaving Britain's Irish fugitives safe for some weeks to come. When the new system does shake down, though, the crook's tour across the Irish Channel will apparently be ended forever.

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