Extradition

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The Putin-South Africa arrest warrant saga: A tale of the shrinking world of an accused war criminal

August 18, 2023

Since March of this year, the travel plans of one particular accused war criminal have been the subject of much speculation and legal debate. On 17 March 2023, the ICC announced that it had issued an arrest warrant for President Putin (and one of his officials – Ms Lvova-Belova). This, unsurprisingly, occasioned world-wide interest and attention. One focus of this was President Putin’s invitation, together with other heads of state, to attend the August 2023 BRICS Summit hosted in South Africa - an ICC Rome Statute state party. Politicians, political pundits, journalists, scholars, and lawyers began to ask: Will Putin attend the Summit, or won’t he? If he does, will South Africa arrest him? If it doesn’t, wouldn’t South Africa violate its international and domestic legal obligations? In the face of repeated refusals by the South African government openly to accept that it would comply with its obligations to arrest President Putin, in May 2023, the Democratic Alliance (the DA), the official parliamentary opposition, launched an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court (the…

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Do States Party to the International Criminal Court Statute have the Obligation to Arrest Vladimir Putin?

April 14, 2023

Background On 17 March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (‘ICC’ or ‘the Court’) issued two arrest warrants for people related to the Ukraine situation, including one for Vladimir Putin, who as President of the Russian Federation is the head of a state that is not a party to the Rome Statute…

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Liu v. Poland: A Game Changer for the Extradition Agendas of Autocracies (like China)?

November 17, 2022

The case of Mr. Hung Tao LIU, one of the many Taiwanese suspects arrested in Europe for cross-border telecom fraud, has once again put Chinese human rights conditions under the international spotlight. By a judgment issued on 6 October 2022, Liu v. Poland, no. 37610/18, the First Section of the European Court of Human Rights…

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The Trilateral Agreement between Turkey, Finland and Sweden and the Silence of Human Rights: The Need to Apply the MoU in Light of Human Rights and Refugee Law Protections  

July 6, 2022

On 28 June, 2022, leaders of Turkey, Finland and Sweden met in Madrid to agree on a trilateral agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that resulted from the meeting contains concrete commitments by Finland and Sweden to cooperate with Turkey in the fields of counter-terrorism, organised crime…

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The Waiver of Immunity of Catalan MEPs: Reintroducing Politics in EU Extradition Law

March 11, 2021

On 8 March 2021, the European Parliament voted to lift the immunity of Catalan MEPs, Puigdemont, Comin and Ponsati. Although this long-lasting saga is far from being over as Puigdemont already announced his intention to bring the case before the CJEU on procedural grounds, this decision would theoretically enable Spanish authorities to resume the European arrest…

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