On one side: the power of the ministries to defuse international incidents. On the other: the determination of the justice system to see its punishments enforced, regardless of the political connections of the defendants.

Nemec ultimately prevailed when the court handed down its decision this week. The real question is not who offered a sturdier legal argument but why Nemec became so determined to press the question at all.

A Czech court had already convicted Prince Hamid bin Abdal Sani of paying for sex with at least 17 young girls — four of them under 15 — in a Prague flat. The going price for each girl: 2,000 Kc ($85) with an extra 1,000 Kc per girl paid to the three adult Czech women who recruited them off the street for him.

Authorities arrested the prince after a girl approached by one of the women told her mother about the offer. They prosecuted him under the legal doctrine that Sani receives no diplomatic immunity by virtue of his royal status as step-cousin to Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani because he lived here for 15 years as a Prague businessman and private citizen, not as a representative of his government.

But only two business days after authorities charged Sani, Nemec announced he intended to extradite Sani to Qatar, even before he himself had read the case file. Nemec's intentions become even more questionable because it's virtually unprecedented for the Czech government to seek foreign transfer of a case against a resident expatriate; such procedures usually apply only to criminal suspects who are visitors passing through the country, not to foreign residents who repeatedly prey on its citizens.

To their credit, however, prosecutors and the judge refused to cooperate and put the prince on trial to let justice take its course. Nemec refused to relent, appealing to the Supreme Court.

Nemec denies any ulterior motive — a claim questioned even by one of the judges who supported his argument — and insists the Qatari government has assured him that Sani will be prosecuted at home, despite having already been convicted here. But that explanation sounds almost deliberately facetious: Sani will almost certainly escape punishment because of the extraordinary advantages that the circumstances of his case give him under the Qatari legal system.

A mix of civil and Islamic regulations, Qatar courts allow only Muslims to testify. Witnesses cannot be minors, and a woman's testimony carries only half the legal weight of a man's. Witnesses must also be present to testify, meaning that his victims would have to travel to Qatar, even if a court there allowed them to testify.