It is often asserted that the lack of an Irish extradition treaty with Belgium influenced post-WWII Flemish and Breton refugees to come to Ireland.
It is true that Ireland,by that time, had not signed such a treaty with Belgium since independence. But Daniel Leach quotes the exapmple of Leo Schotsaert whom the Belgians wanted to extradite but whose extradition was refused under an earlier Anglo-Belgian Extradition Treaty of 1901, Article 7, apparently still then extant, on the grounds that the offence concerned was a political offence and such offences were excluded from extradition under that treaty. This precedent was later used to refuse extradition of Breton nationalists to France.
There is no record of any attempt to extradite Folens. But he was not active politically in Ireland and presumably no longer of interest to Belgium.
And just something that strikes me in today's context. They dredged up a British law to avoid extraditing him. Today the UK and US actually break an existing law to extradite Julian Assange whose "offence" is equally political and so excluded in the UK/US Extradition Treaty.
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