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The SOFA is intended to clarify the terms under which the foreign military is allowed to operate. Typically, purely military issues such as the locations of bases and access to facilities are covered by separate agreeements. The SOFA is more concerned with the legal issues associated with military individuals and property. This may include issues like entry and exit into the country, tax liabilities, postal services, or employment terms for host-country nationals, but the key issues are civil and criminal jurisdiction over the bases. For civil matters, typical SOFAs provide for how civil damages caused by the forces will be determined and paid. Criminal issues vary, but the typical provision in U.S. SOFAs is that U.S. courts will have jurisdiction over crimes committed either by a serviceman against another serviceman or by a serviceman as part of his military duty, but the host nation jurisdiction over other crimes.
In many host nations, especially those with large foreign presences such as Korea and Japan, the SOFA can bcome a major political issue following potential crimes committed by servicemen. This is especially true when the incidents involve severe crimes, such as manslaughter or sex crimes. For example, in 2002 in South Korea, two girls were killed by a U.S. military vehicle during a training exercise, and the soldiers involved were tried under U.S. criminal jurisdiction and acquitted in a U.S. military court, although the U.S. military accepted responsibility and paid civil damages. This prompted widespread protests across Korea, demanding that the soldiers be retried in a Korean court.
However, most crimes by soldiers against local civilians occur off duty, and are considered subject to local jurisdiction. Servicemen are often accused of rape and other sex crimes, and in these cases they are generally subject to local jurisdiction. However, details of the SOFAs can still prompt issues. For example, in Japan, the U.S. SOFA includes the provision that servicemen are not turned over to the local authorities until they are charged in a court. In a number of cases, local officials have complained that this impedes their ability to question suspects and investigate the crime.
The political issue of SOFAs is complicated by the fact that many host countries have mixed feelings about foreign bases in general, and demands to renegotiate the SOFA are often combined with calls for foreign troops to leave entirely. Also, issues of different national customs come up -- while the U.S. and host countries generally agree on what constitutes a crime, many U.S. observers feel that host country judicial systems grant a much weaker set of protections to the accused than the U.S., and that courts can be subject to political pressure to deliver a guilty verdict. On the other hand, host country observers often feel that this is an irrelevant excuse for demanding special treatment, and resembles the extraterritorial agreements demanded by Western countries during colonialism. To many U.S. observers, the fact that most accused criminals eventually end up being tried in a local court and found guilty proves that the system is working; to host country observers, it reinforces the perception that the SOFA protects the guilty and makes the exceptions more glaring.