The High Court refused to commit an anonymised respondent for extradition to Russia after finding substantial grounds for believing he faced a real risk of a trial amounting to a flagrant denial of justice.
Mr Justice Edwards delivered the judgment on 29 April 2015 in proceedings brought by the Attorney General on Russia’s request to prosecute the respondent for homicide. The court said the respondent was wanted for trial, not merely for questioning, and found that a prima facie case had been presented. It did not decide whether he was guilty.
The respondent denied involvement in the 1998 killing of a man identified in the judgment by initials. Russia’s case relied principally on a statement attributed to the respondent’s sister, which said he had confessed to her. She later repudiated that statement, alleging that police had threatened and assaulted her during questioning. Russian authorities disputed that account. The court said the sister’s repudiation did not negate the existence of a prima facie case; it did not determine the truth of the competing accounts.
The respondent also objected that detention conditions in Russia could breach his rights. The court acknowledged continuing systemic problems, but found that specific assurances about where and in what conditions he would be held allayed its concerns in this case. It therefore rejected the objection based on prison conditions. It also rejected objections concerning access to a remedy to challenge detention, the sufficiency of the evidence, and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court upheld the separate Article 6 objection. It considered reports describing structural weaknesses in Russia’s justice system, including concerns about judicial independence and the presumption of innocence. Russia had not addressed the evidence that, in practice, defendants could face a strong prosecution bias. The court was not satisfied that the assurances provided answered those concerns and found a real risk that the respondent would suffer a flagrant denial of justice.
Because that objection succeeded, the court made no committal order under section 29 of the Extradition Act 1965. It ordered that the respondent be discharged from the proceedings and from bail. The ruling did not determine the underlying homicide allegation.