Comment by baubino
4 days ago
> I can't think of one where we just straight up kidnap a foreign head of state and bring them to the US.
I believe Noriega was captured when the US invaded Panama in 1989. But yeah, this is wild (though maybe not unprecedented).
The US has historically captured and executed heads of states in wars, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2006 (executed by the US-administered Iraqi government), and Imperial Japan's Tojo in 1948.
The US extradited, convicted, and imprisoned Honduras' Juan Orlando Hernández, for drug trafficking crimes (though Trump, incongruously, pardoned him in 2025).
Another notable example, the UK arrested Chile's Pinochet in 1998 on a Spanish arrest warrant claiming universal jurisdiction, though no conviction followed from that.
edit: And US Marines captured Grenada's Hudson Austin in 1983, turning him over to Grenada's new government who sentenced him to death, commuted to prison.
edit²: Two other heads of state imprisoned in the US were Alfonso Portillo of Guatemala (extradited to and convicted in US courts in 2014), and Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine (fled willingly to the US, convicted in 2006).
The US has been in a lot of wars/conflicts (even if they were not officially declared) since WWII. Heads of state have not typically been captured. It’s not unprecedented but also not the norm.
It's almost like it's a Republican-Party thing.