Whether extradition to Poland amounts to a violation of Article 6 of ECHR.
Order issued by the Supreme Court's Appeals Selection Committee 13 March 2020, HR-2020-553-U, (case no. 20-035350STR-HRET), criminal case, appeal against order.
A (Counsel Ragnhild Cathrine Torgersen) v. The Public Prosecution Authority (Counsel Wigdis Hjalmarsen)
Justices: Bull, Ringnes, Arntzen
A Polish citizen, who had been charged in Poland with four counts of burglary, was the subject of a request for extradition. When assessing whether extradition would amount to a violation section 8 of the Arrest Warrant Act, cf. Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the Appeals Selection Committee took into account that there must be a genuine risk that the very essence of the right to a fair trial is violated, and that an individual assessment must be made of whether such a genuine risk existed in the case at hand. Although there was no doubt that the independence of Polish courts and judges is threatened and subject to even more pressure now than before the amendments of 14 February 2020, it had not been submitted that were circumstances in the case suggesting that the requested person should not receive a fair trial. There must still be some concrete basis for concluding that extradition will be contrary to Article 6 of the ECHR, when nothing else in the case at hand gives reason to fair it. The request for extradition could thus be complied with.