The Diplomat
The Audiencia Nacional (AN) has refused to extradite Yassin S. to Morocco, the alleged leader of a criminal organisation which, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, was dedicated to the illegal immigration of sub-Saharan Africans from Nador (Morocco) to Europe, as the “assessment, judicially approved in the requesting country, of the need for the extradition and the deprivation of liberty” of the accused was not included in his file.
In an order on Wednesday, reported by Europa Press, the Criminal Chamber explains that the Moroccan request was not accompanied, as established by the Constitutional Court, by “the assessment of a judicial authority of the requesting country of the necessity and proportionality of the deprivation of liberty” of Yassin S.
“With such a lack, the granting of extradition would violate the fundamental rights of the defendant to judicial protection, to a trial with all guarantees, to personal liberty and to freedom of residence and movement, and extradition must therefore be denied”, explains the order.
The same, citing doctrine of the Court of Guarantees, explains that in order to grant extradition, judicial control at origin is required to guarantee the effective judicial protection of the extradited person. In two specific cases, the TC considered that the letters from the Colombian and Angolan Prosecutor’s Offices on which the extradition request was based lacked the corresponding judicial endorsement.
This decision of the Chamber, however, has the dissenting vote of the president of the section, Judge Alfonso Guevara, who is in favour of the surrender of the accused to be tried for the crimes of organisation, association and criminal group, as well as for the organisation of clandestine immigration operations.
According to Judge Guevara, the criteria set out by the Plenary of the Criminal Chamber expressed in an order in May last year should be followed. This indicated that, without prejudice to contradicting “the doctrine emanating from the TC for the cases indicated which do not maintain sufficient identity to be automatically transferred to the case of Morocco”, the International Arrest Warrant issued by the African country “complies with the doctrine emanating from European jurisprudence”.
In Guevara’s opinion, the Moroccan prosecutor is part of the judiciary of the Kingdom of Morocco and, therefore, “with the same guarantees of independence with respect to other powers of the State, particularly the Executive”.
Yassin S. was arrested on 17 August 2022 in the town of Roquetas de Mar, in Almería, and has been in pre-trial detention since the same day. It was a month later, on 20 September, when Morocco requested his extradition for the events described.
