2023-04-23 10:00:17
The embarrassment is both diplomatic and judicial: will France hand over to Moscow a Chechen wanted by Russian justice for a double assassination committed in 2016? Seizure of an emergency procedure, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on April 14 asked the French authorities not to send Bouvayssar T. back to Russia before May 5, the time to examine the request of his lawyer. Me Camille Friedrich wants the ECHR to order France to renounce this extradition, even though a conscription order for Ukraine has been sent to his client in Chechnya.
The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs assured, on April 11, that “the French authorities do not plan to organize this handover” nor to carry out any act preparatory to removal. “There is no imminent risk of dismissal of [Bouvayssar T.] to Russia », decides the ministry, without indicating, in its exchanges with the ECHR, whether or not the government intends to withdraw its extradition decree. However, this has been final and enforceable since March 29, the day MT’s appeal was rejected before the Council of State.
The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian armed forces on February 24, 2022 upset the timetable for a case that was almost completed since, a month earlier, the government had signed the extradition decree. Bouvayssar T. was arrested on January 2, 2020 in Nice and placed under extradition to the Aix-en-Provence remand center, on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by a Moscow court. In his request for provisional arrest, Interpol briefly describes the alleged facts: with two accomplices, he would be the author, “in exchange for a financial reward”, of a double assassination committed on July 25, 2016 in Moscow. Seven shots fired from a Makarov 9mm pistol at a 27-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman. Facts he disputes: “I am not a dangerous man”he repeated over the hearings.
Judicial puzzle
In its judicial phase, the procedure followed its course until a favorable opinion on extradition, issued on July 16, 2021 by the investigating chamber of the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal. The decision was preceded by round trips between the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation and the Aixois judges to obtain the Russian commitment not to carry out the death penalty incurred, if it were pronounced, and that a possible condemnation in perpetuity would allow possible conditional release after twenty-five years. Russia also guaranteed that the prosecution had no political aim, while Bouvayssar T. claimed to be from Ichkeria, a group of Chechen opponents of the regime of Ramzan Kadyrov. Without really establishing the reality, said the Aix judges.
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