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In Star Trek we see many times that alien worlds enlist the help of Starfleet/Federation personnel for humanitarian and other purposes, sometimes these are legitimate, however sometimes it turns out that they have another agenda and have in some cases murdered/attempted to murder those said personnel.

One instance of this is displayed in the episode DS9: "Armageddon Game" where Julian Bashir, Miles O'Brien, Dax and Commander Sisko come under attack by the T'Lani and Kellerun, a species that only days earlier wanted their help to destroy deadly weapons named "Harvesters"

It seems strange that in the end of this episode, there are no apparent repercussions suffered by the attempted murderers. Would it not make sense to send Federation ships to arrest them? To my knowledge their ships would be no match and it would be relatively easy to catch them. If not, does this not send a strong message to the rest of the galaxy that you can do whatever you wish to Federation personnel and get away with it?

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    It's frowned upon, at the least.
    – cde
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 18:58
  • I'd say that in the majority of cases, the aliens in question are not members of the Federation, and would be a major pain to prosecute. Maybe sometimes they are, but by the time the extradition goes through it's the next season.
    – hobbs
    Commented Jun 19, 2016 at 3:48

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In this instance, Sharat and E'Tyshra were acting on behalf of their respective governments. Sisko makes it abundantly clear that their attempt to take Bashir and O'Brien by force can be considered an act of war rather than an act of attempted murder.

SISKO: By firing on this vessel, you've committed an act of war against the Federation.

Now, admittedly the Federation would probably be within its rights to turn up with a few hundred ships, declare war on the governments on the planet below and demand that they turn over the would-be assassins to stand trial on pain of orbital bombardment but that's hardly their style, to say nothing of the implications for their vaunted Prime Directive; to avoid involving themselves in the cultural development of non-Federation races.

All in all, they got off easy with the loss of an (easily replaced) runabout and gained several hundred years worth of exciting intelligence about the technology from the planet below.

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