Or we can turn them over to the Catian Frontier Justices.
They are totally uninvolved in the case. They might make a good candidate for who holds the suspects in custody if we need a neutral party to do that, but they're not a viable candidate for trying the case.
I'm a little worried about taking the Orion side too firmly in the extradition issue.
First and foremost we need to remember that the Amarkians are our members while the Orions are not. This sounds like a callous reasoning, but remember, we are only involved with the Orions to this degree due to the actions of the Stndicate. To that end, we should be careful who and what we are extraditing, especially because of the rampant corruption present in the Amarki courts and Alukk.
I assume you mean the underlined word to be "Orion?"
Anyway, the problem is that we're involved with the Orion Union not just because of the Syndicate, but because
they are our affiliates. They're our allies too. Saying "we will always side with one of our members over one of our affiliates in a dispute, because they're our members" is not a message we want to send. The message we want to send is "we will side with whichever side has the legal right in a given dispute."
Suppose at some future time the Dawiar become a Federation affiliate. They'll probably still have territorial disputes with the Caitians. If they come to us for arbitration, can they count on a fair hearing? Or will we automatically feel obliged to give the Caitians more than their fair share because "the Caitians are our members while the Dawiar are not?" In the latter case, bearing in mind that the Federation is the sum total of its member species, that basically amounts to us saying "The Federation gets the best of everything, the affiliates get the leftovers."
That is not a message compatible with our long term goals. Or with the long good of the Federation as a stable political entity.
IMO we should extradite a majority of the the prisoners. We should, however, not release the high profile shodars. This satisfies both political issues here. The Union can be seen to be addressing the issues concerning protection of its own citizenry while the Amarki are able to exact justice from the individuals who by all accounts ordered and oversaw the abductions of their people.
I think we should have a serious discussion with the Orion and Amarki governments about this and mediate some kind of an arrangement. It might be best to compromise along the lines you propose, but what I would suggest is:
1) Turn the highest-level prisoners over to the Anti-Syndicate Task Force for questioning, then over to the Amarki or the Orions depending on whether statement (2) applies to them.
2) Turn the slavers who
personally participated in the raid, and if applicable the specific leader who ordered the raid but did not personally participate, over to the Amarki.
3) Turn everyone else over to the tender mercies of Madame Sierre on Broken Chains.
