Recent Developments From The Cyprus Courts On The Law Of Extradition

On 11/07/2023, the Appeal Court in Cyprus heard a case where the Russian Federation had requested the extradition of a Russian in order to stand trial for the crime of theft of funds from the federal budget and for knowingly providing false and misleading information when recovering compensation in connection with the known Chernobyl accident.

The accused substantially based his argument requesting his release and non-extradition, on the decision in the Petition for the issuance of DAA v. the Republic of Cyprus in which it was held that the granting of guarantees by the Russian Federation for the conduct of a fair trial, based on the ECHR, could no longer be considered sufficient, precisely because the Russian Federation was in complete isolation from the European legal order and European legal culture, and especially because of the fact that the Russian Federation ceased to be a member of the ECHR and its citizens do not have access to the ECHR. Given this, any