The overnight removal of two crew members from the Russian-flagged tanker Marinera this week by the United States Coast Guard, while the vessel lay in Scottish waters and as proceedings were live before Scotland’s senior civil court, presents an awkward constitutional question.
This is not principally about sanctions, Russia, or shadow fleets.
It is fundamentally about jurisdiction, judicial authority, and whether a foreign military power was permitted, in practice if not in law, to act beyond the reach of British courts.
The Marinera was seized by US forces in international waters south of Iceland on allegations of sanctions evasion linked to Venezuelan oil. That initial interdiction sits within a contested but familiar grey zone of maritime enforcement. But the legal position altered materially once the vessel entered the Moray Firth and its crew were brought ashore in Scotland.
Let’s be clear. From that point on, Scots law applied. So too did UK immigration law and the UK–US framework governing extradition and mutual legal assistance.
That is why US authorities initially pursued mutual legal assistance. It is the recognised process for extradition and for cross-border prosecutions. It is also why lawyers acting for the captain’s wife petitioned the Scottish Court of Session, which issued an interim interdict preventing the captain and first officer from leaving Scottish jurisdiction pending a hearing. The purpose of such orders is straightforward: to prevent irreversible acts while legality is tested. And to enforce sovereignty.
What followed undermined that.
In the early hours of the Wednesday morning, before the court could complete its consideration, the US Department of Justice informed Scottish prosecutors that the two men had already been removed from Scotland and placed aboard a US Coast Guard vessel. Almost simultaneously, Washington withdrew its request for mutual legal assistance.
By the time the court reconvened, it was told, in effect, that the men were beyond its reach.
The American position is that the arrests were lawful and that the UK was coordinating throughout. That is misleading. Coordination is not consent. It is not a substitute for legal authority.
Under UK constitutional arrangements, only British authorities may lawfully detain individuals on British territory, and only British courts may authorise their removal once jurisdiction has been engaged.
The Scottish Government’s response has been to insist that it never detained the men and therefore bore no responsibility for their removal. That may be narrowly accurate in administrative terms. Politically and constitutionally, it is a weak defence.
Jurisdiction does not arise only when a state actively exercises control. It arises from territory. If the practical effect of inaction is to permit a foreign military force to remove individuals from Scotland while a court order is in force, then sovereignty has not been respected, even if it has been rhetorically affirmed.
There is also an extradition issue that cannot be wished away. The UK–US extradition regime exists precisely to prevent unilateral rendition. Withdrawing a mutual legal assistance request mid-process does not extinguish the obligation to respect domestic courts. Nor does it convert a blocked extradition into a lawful arrest by default. If this manoeuvre is accepted as legitimate, it creates a template for bypassing judicial scrutiny whenever urgency or geopolitics can be invoked.
Whether this episode ultimately amounts, in strict legal terms, to unlawful abduction may never be adjudicated in Scotland, given the fait accompli. But even on the most charitable reading, it represents a serious erosion of judicial authority and territorial control. This is concerning when the American military-industrial complex gets involved.
If a foreign coast guard – already implicated in serious human rights abuses in the Carribbean and in relation to Venezuela – can remove individuals from Scotland while a court order is live, then sovereignty is not being defended. It is being trammelled.
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