Extradition

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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 of the Court. Dr Sergey Vasiliev and Dr Miles Jackson have already provided some background information as well as insightful comments on certain aspects of this case. This post will mainly discuss whether states party to the Rome Statute have an obligation to arrest Putin as a result of the cooperation request from the Court, if he indeed appears in their territory, and what role the immunity (ratione personae) of Putin as a head of a non-party state would play in this regard. The relevant provision with regard to the arrest of officials of a non-party state is Article 98(1) of the Statute of ICC which stipulates that the Court may not proceed…

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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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Humanitarian Victory for Assange

January 20, 2021

On 4 January 2021, the British judge Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates Court in London rejected the request to extradite Julian Assange to the United States in a solid 132-page judgment. This does not mean that the WikiLeaks founder has regained his freedom, however: his bail application was likewise rejected two days later on the…

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