SANTO DOMINGO.- The Presidency’s Narcotics Adviser yesterday said the United States embassy disrespects the government when “through a stupid diplomatic note” attributes responsibility for a Supreme Court sentence that declined to extradite a Dominican implicated in a drug-trafficking case in that nation.

Marino Vinicio Castillo complained that the U.S. diplomatic representation didn’t proceed in the same way during ex president Hipólito Mejía’s administration when, according to the official, the extradition treaty “was a dead letter.”

“The United States embassy has made a demand that’s not noble, when it should have respect for the government of Leonel Fernandez,” the Cabinet level minister said, and noted that it has been this administration that has created the bases so that the figure of extradition is respected, especially in the drug-trafficking cases.

He said the Penal Procedural Code in effect stipulates that it’s the Supreme Court which decides on the extradition of a Dominican and not the Executive Branch, to respect the separation of State powers. “How are they going to ask the Executive in a disrespectful manner on an extradition question which another power of the State has decided.”

Castillo said the complaint comes “from the same embassy that didn’t say not even  half a word when Hipólito Mejía issued two decrees motivated to deny the extradition of a citizen from Moca (north) implicated in the Quirino case,” of which he said didn’t have many details.  “To him (Mejia) they never said anything because he was in the coalition of Iraq.”

He added that Fernandez hasn’t refused to comply with a single extradition request.