Published on 16 September 2024
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 14685/23
Jovan JOŠILO
against Croatia
lodged on 27 March 2023
communicated on 27 August 2024
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the applicant’s detention pending extradition, which was ordered concurrently with his pre-trial detention.
On 5 July 2022 the applicant, a national of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was arrested in Croatia. On 7 July 2022 a one-month pre-trial detention was ordered against the applicant in Croatia on suspicion of having committed a forgery. By a number of consecutive decisions, the applicant’s pre-trial detention was extended until 5 January 2023, when it was terminated because the maximum statutory period for it had expired.
On 28 July 2022, while the applicant was in pre-trial detention, the Croatian authorities ordered his detention on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Bosnia and Herzegovina (“the requesting state”) in order to try the applicant in that country. According to the decision of 28 July 2022, the requesting state was given a 40-day time-limit, starting from the day of adoption of the decision, to submit an extradition request with accompanying documents, failing which the applicant would be released. It was also stated that, after the receipt of the extradition request, detention pending extradition could last for the entire duration of the extradition proceedings, until the expiry of the time-limit for the execution of the decision on extradition. It was lastly stated that extradition detention would start to run from the moment of termination of the applicant’s pre-trial detention.
According to the applicant, the 40-day time-limit expired on 6 September 2022. Since the requesting state had not submitted an extradition request by that date, on 7 September 2022 he submitted a motion that his detention pending extradition be terminated. On 30 September 2022 the requesting state submitted the extradition request. On 28 November 2022 the applicant submitted a motion that his detention pending extradition be revoked, arguing that the extradition request had been submitted after the expiry of the 40-day time-limit and that there no longer existed a legal basis for the detention in question.
On 5 January 2023 (the day when the applicant’s pre-trial detention was terminated, see above), the Rijeka County Court dismissed the applicant’s requests of 7 September and 28 November 2022 that his extradition detention be terminated/revoked. In particular, it held that the relevant time-limits set by the decision of 28 July 2022, including the 40-day time-limit to submit the extradition request with accompanying documents, started to run only after the termination of the applicant’s pre-trial detention. The applicant’s appeal against the latter decision was dismissed and, on the day of lodging his application with the Court, he was still in extradition detention.
The applicant complains, relying on Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 and Article 6 of the Convention, about the unlawfulness of his detention as of 5 January 2023 and about the lack of diligence in the conduct of the domestic authorities, who failed to timely examine his requests of 7 September and 28 November 2022 that his extradition detention be terminated/revoked.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the applicant’s detention pending extradition been in compliance with Article 5 § 1 (f) of the Convention? In particular, has the applicant’s detention as of 5 January 2023 been lawful and not arbitrary? Have the extradition proceedings been conducted with due diligence (see J.N. v. the United Kingdom, no. 37289/12, §§ 74-86, 19 May 2016, and Komissarov v. the Czech Republic, no. 20611/17, §§ 45-47, 3 February 2022)?
2. Having regard to the fact that the applicant’s requests of 7 September and 28 November 2022 to terminate/revoke his extradition detention were examined only after his pre-trial detention had been terminated, was the length of the proceedings by which the applicant sought to challenge the lawfulness of his detention pending extradition in compliance with the “speed” requirement of Article 5 § 4 of the Convention (see Mooren v. Germany [GC], no. 11364/03, § 106, 9 July 2009)?
The parties are invited to submit to the Court references to the relevant domestic provisions and case-law, where available.