The Supreme Court motivated its decision by noting there is “a real risk” of subjecting the prisoner “to inhuman or degrading treatment” if the request comes from Beijing, as “several reliable international sources give evidence of systematic violations of human rights and the tolerated use of forms of torture”
Italy’s High Court distrust China’s judiciary. On Wednesday, the highest Italian court published the motivation behind its historical decision to block an extradition towards China – a first. And the text notes that “where the People’s Republic of China makes the request, there is a real risk […] of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment”…
- …“since several reliable international sources acknowledge systematic violations of human rights and the tolerated use of forms of torture, as well as the substantial impossibility for independent institutions and organisations to verify the actual conditions of the persons detained in the detention centres.”
- In upholding the appeal, the Supreme Court also highlighted the subject’s fears – “also based on the conditions of detention suffered by her brother and reported by him in a note acquired at the trial, in which he referred to a detention ordered illegally and, in concrete terms, aimed at inducing his sister to return to China.”
A step back. The woman, a former CEO of a well-known Chinese company, is wanted in her home country for alleged economic crimes. She had been arrested in Italy in the summer of 2022 in the light of an Interpol Red Notice, spending seven months in prison and a few weeks under house arrest.
- Reached by our sister website, the defending lawyer Enrico Di Fiorino had described the Supreme Court’s decision as a “historic ruling, which expresses a now-common and uniform position that Western countries have taken with respect to extradition requests from countries that do not know or respect the rule of law.”
