CASE OF GALLARDO SANCHEZ v. ITALY
Violation of Article 5 - Right to liberty and security (Article 5-1 - Deprivation of liberty;Lawful arrest or detention;Article 5-1-f - Extradition)
George Nicolaou;Guido Raimondi;Krzysztof Wojtyczek;Ledi Bianku;Nona Tsotsoria;Päivi Hirvelä;Paul Mahoney
6. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 7. The applicant, Mr Manuel Rogelio Gallardo Sanchez, is a Venezuelan national who was born in 1965 and lives in Cape Town (South Africa). 8. On 19 April 2005, the applicant, who had been accused of arson by the Greek authorities, was taken into custody pending extradition by the Rome police on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Athens Court of Appeal on 26 January 2005 under the European Convention on Extradition of 13 December 1957. 9. On 22 April 2005 the Court of Appeal of L’Aquila validated the applicant’s arrest and ordered his detention. 10. On 26 April 2005 the Ministry of Justice asked the Court of Appeal to extend his detention. 11. At the hearing of 27 April 2005, the President of the Court of Appeal, ruling under Article 717 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (see paragraph 25 below), established the applicant’s identity and asked if he gave his consent to his extradition. He did not consent. 12. On 9 June 2005 the Minister of Justice informed the Court of Appeal that, on 25 May 2005, the Greek authorities had sent a request for extradition together with all the requisite supporting documents. 13. On 21 June 2005 the public prosecutor’s office asked the Court of Appeal to grant the extradition request. 14. The hearing was scheduled for 15 December 2005. At the request of the applicant’s representative, it was postponed until 12 January 2006. 15. Without any prior investigation the Court of Appeal approved the extradition by a decision of 12 January 2006, deposited on 30 January 2006. It verified the conformity of the extradition request with the European Convention on Extradition and compliance with the ne bis in idem and double criminality principles, and it ruled out the possibility that the proceedings had been brought for any discriminatory or political reasons. 16. On 3 March 2006 the applicant appealed on points of law, arguing in particular that the request for his extradition had been sent by the Greek authorities after the forty-day time-limit provided for in Article 16 § 4 of the European Convention on Extradition, which meant in his view that his detention had been unlawful. He further argued that the charges laid against him by the Greek authorities were not based on serious indications of guilt. He submitted that he should therefore be released. 17. In a judgment of 11 May 2006, deposited in the registry on 18 September 2006, the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal with only one page of reasoning, in particular because it found that the extradition request had been received within the time-limit provided for in the European Convention on Extradition and that it did not have jurisdiction to examine whether serious indications of guilt had been adduced. 18. In the meantime, on three occasions between June and September 2005, the applicant had applied to the Rome Court of Appeal, unsuccessfully, to obtain his release. In its last decision of 27 October 2005, adopted in private in compliance with the adversarial principle, and without any prior investigation, the Court of Appeal found that there was no reason to depart from the two previous rejection decisions, having regard to the on-going risk that the applicant might abscond, even though the authorities had taken away his passport, and to the State’s obligation to comply with its international commitments. 19. On 9 October 2006 the Minister of Justice signed the extradition order. 20. On 26 October 2006 the applicant was extradited to Greece.