Attentat Definition

An attentat, in the language of the civil and canon laws, is anything, whatsoever, wrongfully innovated or attempted in the suit by the judge à quo, pending an appeal. […] In Chichester v. Donegal (3) it was intimated by Sir John Nicholl that “The regular course for procuring the revocation of attentats was by a separate proceeding, civil or criminal, as against a judge à quo, and that it was not by charging the supposed attentats, accumulatively, in a mere ordinary libel of appeal.”

By the end of nineteenth century the attentat clause became a general exception in making of extradition treaties. The 1933 Montevideo Convention on Extradition by its Article 5 incorporated the exception in nature of attentat clause in the general protection against extradition, already made available to the political offenders under Article 3(2).