Her personal remorse has nothing to do with justice being served.
How is a lifetime of feeling absolutely miserable not justice? What is justice, even? How would you punish what she did without getting revenge and justice mixed up?
Lock her up? What for? Again, she's already feeling horrible about it. Rehab? Judging from her last lines she's already coming around. So maybe she can do some good now. Wouldn't that be more preferable, considering the insane amount of rebuilding that's required?
I completely agree. Seems like several posters in this thread are pushing their own ideas of revenge on us and pretending its "justice." Sela has a lot on her mind, and it's there where the real punishment lies. Lock a criminal up for decades, but if they believe they are innocent, there is little real suffering other than physical discomfort. Not that I think Sela really deserves punishment in the first place -- I just think that we need to specify what, exactly, justice means in this case.
Personal opinions on Sela and/or sympathy for her own actions leading to this are irrelevant. I personally think D'tan is a scumbag opportunist who sold the birthright of all Romulans to the Federation and KDF to keep his power, and Sela is 500 times the leader he'll ever be.
But that's besides the point. The facts are Sela is a wanted criminal by the Romulan Republic, and by extension it's Federation masters. She would logically be immediately arrested and imprisoned, end of story.
Her personal remorse has nothing to do with justice being served.
How is a lifetime of feeling absolutely miserable not justice? What is justice, even? How would you punish what she did without getting revenge and justice mixed up?
Lock her up? What for? Again, she's already feeling horrible about it. Rehab? Judging from her last lines she's already coming around. So maybe she can do some good now. Wouldn't that be more preferable, considering the insane amount of rebuilding that's required?
In cases where the risks of recidivism are too high--where the demonstrated capabilities for destruction are too high--I think that it is both a matter of justice and public safety to ensure the chance of reoffending is eliminated. Sela is such an example, as demonstrated by her prior prison breaks and subsequent crimes.
Plus, one who is truly repentant of crimes of that magnitude will understand and agree with the need for penance. Raskolnikov still had to go to Siberia, after all.
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Lets see... If we kill Sela then not only is she released from all remorse but we make an enemy of the RSE. We lock her up and the RSE is going to have no reason to help the rest of the quadrant recover. If on the other hand we send her back to the RSE with the backing of the other powers of the quadrant the four of them can help one another to rebuild and most likely begin a new era of peace and prosperity. The Tal Shiar probably have enough ships to prop up the other factions and even the odds should T'Ket regroup and attempt another invasion so getting them on side is kind of important.
I wouldn't assume that Sela has any RSE support left. Especially, when everybody learns why the Iconians were so set on destroying the Romulans to the last one.
Lets see... If we kill Sela then not only is she released from all remorse but we make an enemy of the RSE. We lock her up and the RSE is going to have no reason to help the rest of the quadrant recover. If on the other hand we send her back to the RSE with the backing of the other powers of the quadrant the four of them can help one another to rebuild and most likely begin a new era of peace and prosperity. The Tal Shiar probably have enough ships to prop up the other factions and even the odds should T'Ket regroup and attempt another invasion so getting them on side is kind of important.
I wouldn't assume that Sela has any RSE support left. Especially, when everybody learns why the Iconians were so set on destroying the Romulans to the last one.
Kind of my line of thought.
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Plus, one who is truly repentant of crimes of that magnitude will understand and agree with the need for penance. Raskolnikov still had to go to Siberia, after all.
Who knows, maybe she will do just that. In any case, the end of Midnight was too immediate to find out.
Considering she always has a backdoor for her plans, she may have made sure she got a Dominion diplomatic immunity before coming to help, so unless you want another Dominion War...
Granted if everyone knows what happened, she probably has ALL the galaxy looking at her with murderous urges. But yeah, she needs to face a proper trial. Just for the symbolism, since with all those charges, it's either life-imprisonment, execution or sent to T'Ket so the Iconian can let off 200,000 years worth of steam.
Considering she always has a backdoor for her plans, she may have made sure she got a Dominion diplomatic immunity before coming to help, so unless you want another Dominion War...
That is... unlikely. Even if declaring war on the Iconians is in the Dominion's best interests, the Founders would still likely view it as them doing a favour for us, which includes Sela. In other words, they don't owe Sela a thing and would certainly not defend her.
Plus, one who is truly repentant of crimes of that magnitude will understand and agree with the need for penance. Raskolnikov still had to go to Siberia, after all.
Who knows, maybe she will do just that. In any case, the end of Midnight was too immediate to find out.
When I see her go willingly to her execution and actually die (or with Romulan tradition, commit suicide in public), then I'll believe that she has truly repented. Even life in prison is too great a danger to society and too little of a punishment to be justice in her case. But with the prior track record she has, I need to see it beyond doubt to believe it.
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We do not know that Sela is not a prisoner. On Earth it would be a simple thing to monitor the location and activities of a known criminal.
However, what crimes has she committed against either the Federation or Earth? Her actions as leader of the Romulan Star Empire cannot be adjudicated by the Federation Judiciary because her supposed crimes were the acts of a head of state in the furtherance of that state's established policy. The genocides of which she is accused did not take place within Federation jurisdiction, and therefore the Federation has no standing upon which to build a criminal case.
She cannot be held as a prisoner of war either, because there is no state of war between the Romulan Star Empire and the Federation.
The best the Federation can do with her is to remand her into the custody of the Romulan Star Empire. She cannot simply be handed over to the Republic because she is not a citizen of the Romulan Republic, and the Republic is in a belligerent position with the Star Empire. Without going into too much detail, I will merely point out that rendition of a person from one state into the hands of another by a third party is, at best, problematic in our own time on our own world, and would be even more so in an interstellar environment.
So, the Federation has only two choices: let her go, or send her back to the Star Empire.
Dukat wasn't a citizen of the Federation. That didn't stop them from charging him with war crimes instead of handing him over to the Cardassians. All they had to do was drop him on some backwater planet and tell them where they could pick him up.
Besides, one of the (unsuccessful) genocides of which Sela is guilty is an attempt to glass Vulcan. The attempted murder charges alone are enough to send her to prison for the rest of her natural life.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
^^So did Sela's. Or did you forget the part where she tried to glass Vulcan?
Post edited by starswordc on
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
"Hey Sela, you still have a lot of supporters and political clout. However, if we decide to publicly release information that you were responsible for Romulus' destruction, then that support will disappear really quickly, and you won't be able to trust another Romulan ever again. So you can either work for us as a puppet Emperess, or we tell everyone what you did and you'll be dead within the week, if you're lucky."
Very unfortunate circumstances in the situation regarding Dukat, where the Federation unjustly tried him for war crimes when he was obviously a strong, just, and able leader who worked for the betterment of not only his people, but the Bajorans as well (until the latter ruined it all with their uprising).
Is it wrong that I read this imagining Marc Alaimo's voice.
Dukat's crimes happened in territory claimed by the Federation and/or Bajor. Jurisdiction applies.
It is a bit different with Dukat, because he was the leader of the Cardassian Union and at that time the Federation-Klingon Alliance was at war with them. While Bajoran law was upheld on Deep Space 9 despite it being under Federation administration, the Bajorans decided to move him over to the Federation.
One could say that the burden of knowing that she has caused the near extinction of her people is punishment enough. This will weigh heavily on her for the rest of her life.
It isn't really enough in a legal sense, and I think she will go to trial - unless she disappears again.
Getting her finally killed might be very satisfying, but ultimately, not very an interesting story. Now that she has faced that she is responsible for what happened to her people, she might change and that might be interesting to see.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Soooo... we should arrest Sela for trying to destroy Vulcan?
Um... we let L'Miren and friends walk away and head back to Iconia to sit in peace despite actually destroying Romulus, trying to destroy Qo'noS and Earth, wreaking ESD... twice, essentially committing multiple counts of genocide by genetically obliterating several species to remake them into "heralds" and "servitors" who worship them,
causing a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire, and a war between those two parties and, uh, everyone else ever. Oh yeah... and all of those direct assaults which devastated the Alliance and apparently lost them a number of outposts and colonies.
And when all was said and done? We hand them a gift and make nicey-nice and let them walk away. I guess it's okay though because, uh, someone else destroyed their world and they were very upset about it.
But Sela? Yeah, she needs to be held accountable for her actions against the UFP and KDF... despite the fact that, uh, someone else destroyed her world too and she was very upset about it.
I completely agree. Seems like several posters in this thread are pushing their own ideas of revenge on us and pretending its "justice."
Um, that is one of the founding principles of justice. Jurisprudence tells us that there are four main reasons for punishment within the criminal justice system to exist in the form of imprisonment or execution: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution.
It's one of the foundations of law, society and justice. Hell, the only one that isn't pretty much universally excepted is rehabilitation. Society decided a long, long time ago that if you wrong it or another a debt of vengeance is owed, since lex talionis on back...
Soooo... we should arrest Sela for trying to destroy Vulcan?
Um... we let L'Miren and friends walk away and head back to Iconia to sit in peace despite actually destroying Romulus, trying to destroy Qo'noS and Earth, wreaking ESD... twice, essentially committing multiple counts of genocide by genetically obliterating several species to remake them into "heralds" and "servitors" who worship them,
causing a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire, and a war between those two parties and, uh, everyone else ever. Oh yeah... and all of those direct assaults which devastated the Alliance and apparently lost them a number of outposts and colonies.
And when all was said and done? We hand them a gift and make nicey-nice and let them walk away. I guess it's okay though because, uh, someone else destroyed their world and they were very upset about it.
But Sela? Yeah, she needs to be held accountable for her actions against the UFP and KDF... despite the fact that, uh, someone else destroyed her world too and she was very upset about it.
I completely agree. Seems like several posters in this thread are pushing their own ideas of revenge on us and pretending its "justice."
Um, that is one of the founding principles of justice. Jurisprudence tells us that there are four main reasons for punishment within the criminal justice system to exist in the form of imprisonment or execution: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution.
It's one of the foundations of law, society and justice. Hell, the only one that isn't pretty much universally excepted is rehabilitation. Society decided a long, long time ago that if you wrong it or another a debt of vengeance is owed, since lex talionis on back...
History is written by the winners, as they say. L'Miren was never deposed, and remains in power and therefore not the same situation as Sela or even the female Changeling.
Handing the one thing the Iconians absolutely need for the future of their entire civilisation without negotiation or comment was a load of pants though, I agree.
^^So did Sela's. Or did you forget the part where she tried to glass Vulcan?
That isn't of any major concern to me. Sela did what she believed was the morally sound thing to do at the time. Now she feels otherwise, and she has to live with it. I wish Sela all the best. We all make mistakes sometimes.
Yeah I don't think that defence worked well at Nuremberg now, did it.
Lets see... If we kill Sela then not only is she released from all remorse but we make an enemy of the RSE. We lock her up and the RSE is going to have no reason to help the rest of the quadrant recover. If on the other hand we send her back to the RSE with the backing of the other powers of the quadrant the four of them can help one another to rebuild and most likely begin a new era of peace and prosperity. The Tal Shiar probably have enough ships to prop up the other factions and even the odds should T'Ket regroup and attempt another invasion so getting them on side is kind of important.
Nelas, my main Romulan character and an ardent Imperialist, would look at the evidence and say "She brought about through her actions the destruction of Romulus. Execute her."
I suspect that is how a lot of the RSE would think.
I wouldn't stay in the Dominion either if I were her, she's basically a failure, and the Dominion does not think much of failure. When (If?) they find out what she did...
I was just hoping that either we'd get the chance to kill her after her most recent action, or that Mr Klingon would have buried his knife in her chest for being a traitor.
^^So did Sela's. Or did you forget the part where she tried to glass Vulcan?
That isn't of any major concern to me. Sela did what she believed was the morally sound thing to do at the time. Now she feels otherwise, and she has to live with it. I wish Sela all the best. We all make mistakes sometimes.
Yeah I don't think that defence worked well at Nuremberg now, did it.
I don't know. It worked in Huntsville where we hired up S.S. rocket scientists. That argument worked in Washington and Moscow where both sides of the Cold War had TRIBBLE actually construct their newly forged intelligence operations. Heck, we not only established a TRIBBLE intelligence officer as "father of the CIA", we assigned him a governmental role back in West Germany after that, overseeing the same region he'd overseen .
The war crimes tribunal was for the survivors. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. didn't exactly cooperate and shielded a lot of people from those tribunals. We helped a number of them pose as Holocaust survivors.
Read "The TRIBBLE Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men".
EDIT: I'd also recommend "Blowback: America's Recruitment of TRIBBLE and its Effect on the Cold War".
^^So did Sela's. Or did you forget the part where she tried to glass Vulcan?
That isn't of any major concern to me. Sela did what she believed was the morally sound thing to do at the time. Now she feels otherwise, and she has to live with it. I wish Sela all the best. We all make mistakes sometimes.
Yeah I don't think that defence worked well at Nuremberg now, did it.
I don't know. It worked in Huntsville where we hired up S.S. rocket scientists. That argument worked in Washington and Moscow where both sides of the Cold War had TRIBBLE actually construct their newly forged intelligence operations. Heck, we not only established a TRIBBLE intelligence officer as "father of the CIA", we assigned him a governmental role back in West Germany after that, overseeing the same region he'd overseen .
The war crimes tribunal was for the survivors. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. didn't exactly cooperate and shielded a lot of people from those tribunals. We helped a number of them pose as Holocaust survivors.
Read "The TRIBBLE Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men".
EDIT: I'd also recommend "Blowback: America's Recruitment of TRIBBLE and its Effect on the Cold War".
Sure, but none of that had to do with any defence, but rather how useful these people were to the former allies.
Same reason why Hirohito remained Emperor of Japan. Because he was useful.
So it would depend how useful Sela would be to the Federation vs. the benefit of handing her over to the Romulan Republic or convicting her themselves and honestly, I don't really see what Sela has to offer at this point.
^^So did Sela's. Or did you forget the part where she tried to glass Vulcan?
That isn't of any major concern to me. Sela did what she believed was the morally sound thing to do at the time. Now she feels otherwise, and she has to live with it. I wish Sela all the best. We all make mistakes sometimes.
Yeah I don't think that defence worked well at Nuremberg now, did it.
I don't know. It worked in Huntsville where we hired up S.S. rocket scientists. That argument worked in Washington and Moscow where both sides of the Cold War had TRIBBLE actually construct their newly forged intelligence operations. Heck, we not only established a TRIBBLE intelligence officer as "father of the CIA", we assigned him a governmental role back in West Germany after that, overseeing the same region he'd overseen .
The war crimes tribunal was for the survivors. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. didn't exactly cooperate and shielded a lot of people from those tribunals. We helped a number of them pose as Holocaust survivors.
Read "The TRIBBLE Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men".
EDIT: I'd also recommend "Blowback: America's Recruitment of TRIBBLE and its Effect on the Cold War".
Sure, but none of that had to do with any defence, but rather how useful these people were to the former allies.
Same reason why Hirohito remained Emperor of Japan. Because he was useful.
So it would depend how useful Sela would be to the Federation vs. the benefit of handing her over to the Romulan Republic or convicting her themselves and honestly, I don't really see what Sela has to offer at this point.
Well, if you want to get black ops-y, I'd say even without direct control over her, Sela has several strategic benefits.
First, we'll look at the cleaner side of this, putting on a roleplay hat:
- Attempting to blackmail her is likely to backfire.
- She provides stability to the region.
- The Prime Directive is often broadly interpreted as not allowing interference in the affairs of other states, including warp-capable ones. It is frequently upheld even if the result would be genocide. Sela's attacks on her own people are an internal matter for the Romulan people.
The dirty side of this:
- Even without direct control over her as an asset, the guilt she has is a vulnerability our diplomats can leverage. A replacement may not have a similar weakness.
- Sela is independent of the Tal Shiar. It is doubtful any replacement would be as most who are not are likely in the Romulan Republic. Donatra is dead. Tomalak is unaccounted for. Nero and Shinzon killed past praetors.
- Her half-human heritage creates possible propaganda in-roads; we want her to be successful and her failure could backfire, particularly after the Shinzon debacle.
- Our ultimate interest is in promoting Vulcan-Republic Reunification attitudes with a skeptical attitude as to their viability while working longterm to reintegrate the Republic with the Empire. This is a careful process. Sela is unlikely to act against the Republic at this point and we need more time to terraform Republic culture before attempting to reinject them into the Romulan Empire, acting as carriers for pro-Federation sentiment. We need not only to alter Republic culture. We also need to secure them enough leverage so that when they do eventually rejoin the Empire, the Empire is willing to make major concessions including Reman representation in the Senate and major pro-Federation trade and military policies.
- The Republic is smaller therefore we can focus more resources on influencing it. We need to keep it separate from the Empire and stable for maybe 30-50 years before ushering it to reintegrate with the Empire, on terms that favor the Empire offering the Republic major concessions. This way, we will be able to impose major changes on the Empire that we would not be able to change ordinarily.
- Sela allows us to focus on the Republic and acts as a boogeyman we can use to secure Republic relations despite the fact that she is not likely to oppose the Republic.
- Sela's ambitions are grand and her plans are often overcomplicated to the point of incompetence. We can deal with an attempted invasion of Vulcan every few years if they're as incompetent as hers tend to be. In fact, these will only increase our standing with the Republic. We should do everything we can to keep Sela in power while publicly denouncing her actions. But we should limit our denouncements to harsh words while fostering the idea that she is incompetent. If we're lucky, we can probably position D'Tan as Emperor of the whole empire in 30 years. We should probably also move to strengthen ties to Obisek and try to figure out how to control him. He has a future ahead of him in politics, much as he'd want to deny it.
The North Korean Propaganda Ministry has arrived for a contrary view on Sela.
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l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Comments
Personal opinions on Sela and/or sympathy for her own actions leading to this are irrelevant. I personally think D'tan is a scumbag opportunist who sold the birthright of all Romulans to the Federation and KDF to keep his power, and Sela is 500 times the leader he'll ever be.
But that's besides the point. The facts are Sela is a wanted criminal by the Romulan Republic, and by extension it's Federation masters. She would logically be immediately arrested and imprisoned, end of story.
In cases where the risks of recidivism are too high--where the demonstrated capabilities for destruction are too high--I think that it is both a matter of justice and public safety to ensure the chance of reoffending is eliminated. Sela is such an example, as demonstrated by her prior prison breaks and subsequent crimes.
Plus, one who is truly repentant of crimes of that magnitude will understand and agree with the need for penance. Raskolnikov still had to go to Siberia, after all.
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I wouldn't assume that Sela has any RSE support left. Especially, when everybody learns why the Iconians were so set on destroying the Romulans to the last one.
Kind of my line of thought.
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Granted if everyone knows what happened, she probably has ALL the galaxy looking at her with murderous urges. But yeah, she needs to face a proper trial. Just for the symbolism, since with all those charges, it's either life-imprisonment, execution or sent to T'Ket so the Iconian can let off 200,000 years worth of steam.
That is... unlikely. Even if declaring war on the Iconians is in the Dominion's best interests, the Founders would still likely view it as them doing a favour for us, which includes Sela. In other words, they don't owe Sela a thing and would certainly not defend her.
When I see her go willingly to her execution and actually die (or with Romulan tradition, commit suicide in public), then I'll believe that she has truly repented. Even life in prison is too great a danger to society and too little of a punishment to be justice in her case. But with the prior track record she has, I need to see it beyond doubt to believe it.
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However, what crimes has she committed against either the Federation or Earth? Her actions as leader of the Romulan Star Empire cannot be adjudicated by the Federation Judiciary because her supposed crimes were the acts of a head of state in the furtherance of that state's established policy. The genocides of which she is accused did not take place within Federation jurisdiction, and therefore the Federation has no standing upon which to build a criminal case.
She cannot be held as a prisoner of war either, because there is no state of war between the Romulan Star Empire and the Federation.
The best the Federation can do with her is to remand her into the custody of the Romulan Star Empire. She cannot simply be handed over to the Republic because she is not a citizen of the Romulan Republic, and the Republic is in a belligerent position with the Star Empire. Without going into too much detail, I will merely point out that rendition of a person from one state into the hands of another by a third party is, at best, problematic in our own time on our own world, and would be even more so in an interstellar environment.
So, the Federation has only two choices: let her go, or send her back to the Star Empire.
Besides, one of the (unsuccessful) genocides of which Sela is guilty is an attempt to glass Vulcan. The attempted murder charges alone are enough to send her to prison for the rest of her natural life.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
"Hey Sela, you still have a lot of supporters and political clout. However, if we decide to publicly release information that you were responsible for Romulus' destruction, then that support will disappear really quickly, and you won't be able to trust another Romulan ever again. So you can either work for us as a puppet Emperess, or we tell everyone what you did and you'll be dead within the week, if you're lucky."
Is it wrong that I read this imagining Marc Alaimo's voice.
It is a bit different with Dukat, because he was the leader of the Cardassian Union and at that time the Federation-Klingon Alliance was at war with them. While Bajoran law was upheld on Deep Space 9 despite it being under Federation administration, the Bajorans decided to move him over to the Federation.
Getting her finally killed might be very satisfying, but ultimately, not very an interesting story. Now that she has faced that she is responsible for what happened to her people, she might change and that might be interesting to see.
Um... we let L'Miren and friends walk away and head back to Iconia to sit in peace despite actually destroying Romulus, trying to destroy Qo'noS and Earth, wreaking ESD... twice, essentially committing multiple counts of genocide by genetically obliterating several species to remake them into "heralds" and "servitors" who worship them,
causing a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire, and a war between those two parties and, uh, everyone else ever. Oh yeah... and all of those direct assaults which devastated the Alliance and apparently lost them a number of outposts and colonies.
And when all was said and done? We hand them a gift and make nicey-nice and let them walk away. I guess it's okay though because, uh, someone else destroyed their world and they were very upset about it.
But Sela? Yeah, she needs to be held accountable for her actions against the UFP and KDF... despite the fact that, uh, someone else destroyed her world too and she was very upset about it.
Um, that is one of the founding principles of justice. Jurisprudence tells us that there are four main reasons for punishment within the criminal justice system to exist in the form of imprisonment or execution: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution.
It's one of the foundations of law, society and justice. Hell, the only one that isn't pretty much universally excepted is rehabilitation. Society decided a long, long time ago that if you wrong it or another a debt of vengeance is owed, since lex talionis on back...
Yeah I don't think that defence worked well at Nuremberg now, did it.
Nelas, my main Romulan character and an ardent Imperialist, would look at the evidence and say "She brought about through her actions the destruction of Romulus. Execute her."
I suspect that is how a lot of the RSE would think.
I wouldn't stay in the Dominion either if I were her, she's basically a failure, and the Dominion does not think much of failure. When (If?) they find out what she did...
I was just hoping that either we'd get the chance to kill her after her most recent action, or that Mr Klingon would have buried his knife in her chest for being a traitor.
I don't know. It worked in Huntsville where we hired up S.S. rocket scientists. That argument worked in Washington and Moscow where both sides of the Cold War had TRIBBLE actually construct their newly forged intelligence operations. Heck, we not only established a TRIBBLE intelligence officer as "father of the CIA", we assigned him a governmental role back in West Germany after that, overseeing the same region he'd overseen .
The war crimes tribunal was for the survivors. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. didn't exactly cooperate and shielded a lot of people from those tribunals. We helped a number of them pose as Holocaust survivors.
Read "The TRIBBLE Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men".
EDIT: I'd also recommend "Blowback: America's Recruitment of TRIBBLE and its Effect on the Cold War".
Sure, but none of that had to do with any defence, but rather how useful these people were to the former allies.
Same reason why Hirohito remained Emperor of Japan. Because he was useful.
So it would depend how useful Sela would be to the Federation vs. the benefit of handing her over to the Romulan Republic or convicting her themselves and honestly, I don't really see what Sela has to offer at this point.
Well, if you want to get black ops-y, I'd say even without direct control over her, Sela has several strategic benefits.
First, we'll look at the cleaner side of this, putting on a roleplay hat:
- Attempting to blackmail her is likely to backfire.
- She provides stability to the region.
- The Prime Directive is often broadly interpreted as not allowing interference in the affairs of other states, including warp-capable ones. It is frequently upheld even if the result would be genocide. Sela's attacks on her own people are an internal matter for the Romulan people.
The dirty side of this:
- Even without direct control over her as an asset, the guilt she has is a vulnerability our diplomats can leverage. A replacement may not have a similar weakness.
- Sela is independent of the Tal Shiar. It is doubtful any replacement would be as most who are not are likely in the Romulan Republic. Donatra is dead. Tomalak is unaccounted for. Nero and Shinzon killed past praetors.
- Her half-human heritage creates possible propaganda in-roads; we want her to be successful and her failure could backfire, particularly after the Shinzon debacle.
- Our ultimate interest is in promoting Vulcan-Republic Reunification attitudes with a skeptical attitude as to their viability while working longterm to reintegrate the Republic with the Empire. This is a careful process. Sela is unlikely to act against the Republic at this point and we need more time to terraform Republic culture before attempting to reinject them into the Romulan Empire, acting as carriers for pro-Federation sentiment. We need not only to alter Republic culture. We also need to secure them enough leverage so that when they do eventually rejoin the Empire, the Empire is willing to make major concessions including Reman representation in the Senate and major pro-Federation trade and military policies.
- The Republic is smaller therefore we can focus more resources on influencing it. We need to keep it separate from the Empire and stable for maybe 30-50 years before ushering it to reintegrate with the Empire, on terms that favor the Empire offering the Republic major concessions. This way, we will be able to impose major changes on the Empire that we would not be able to change ordinarily.
- Sela allows us to focus on the Republic and acts as a boogeyman we can use to secure Republic relations despite the fact that she is not likely to oppose the Republic.
- Sela's ambitions are grand and her plans are often overcomplicated to the point of incompetence. We can deal with an attempted invasion of Vulcan every few years if they're as incompetent as hers tend to be. In fact, these will only increase our standing with the Republic. We should do everything we can to keep Sela in power while publicly denouncing her actions. But we should limit our denouncements to harsh words while fostering the idea that she is incompetent. If we're lucky, we can probably position D'Tan as Emperor of the whole empire in 30 years. We should probably also move to strengthen ties to Obisek and try to figure out how to control him. He has a future ahead of him in politics, much as he'd want to deny it.
My signature says all that I need to say.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'