Ukraine seeks permission from EU countries to extradite war criminals and corrupt officials
Kyiv • UNN
Ukraine is asking 10 EU member states for permission to extradite war criminals and people accused of large-scale corruption.
Ukraine is seeking permission from 10 EU member states to extradite criminals to the country, including those suspected of involvement in the Wagner military-industrial complex and accused of large-scale corruption. This was reported by UNN with reference to The Guardian.
Details
According to the newspaper, on Tuesday, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin will inform EU justice ministers gathered in Brussels that the country has solved the problem of security and conditions of detention of prisoners awaiting trial during the war.
He declined to name the EU member states that have concerns, but it is known that several countries, including France, Austria and Finland, have recently refused to send suspects back to Ukraine to stand trial.
Since the beginning of the war, Ukrainian courts have issued about 700 extradition orders, Kostin said.
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Among these requests is a request for the extradition of neo-Nazi Jan Petrovsky, a member of the Wagner group, accused of involvement in terrorism, who, as it turned out, entered Finland under a pseudonym.
Petrovsky is in custody in Finland, but in December the Supreme Court ruled that he cannot be extradited, citing inhumane conditions in prison.
Andriy Kostin said that 123,000 cases of war crimes have been identified, and only 357 have been brought to court so far.
Austria and France have also recently rejected Ukraine's extradition request for a former bank CEO and a former member of parliament and businessman accused of embezzlement.
"Of course, we all understand that extradition decisions are made by the courts. But we see that some countries... resist because of their understanding of the conditions of detention, which we are improving. And I will talk about this (to the ministers of justice - ed.)," he said.
According to Kostin, the countries will receive guarantees that the extradited detainees will be held in centers in western Ukraine, away from the front line, and "the conditions (of detention - ed.) will comply with the rules and standards of the European Union and especially the European Convention on Human Rights.
"Ukraine will invite states that have doubts about extradition to visit the country and see for themselves the conditions in which the suspect will be held," he added.
In an interview with the Guardian, Kostin also said that 123,000 cases of war crimes have already been identified, and only 357 have been brought to court.
The crimes include rape, destruction of property, looting and illegal abduction of children, while 531 suspects of war crimes have been identified.
Among the most egregious crimes are the rapes of women and men, which, according to him, took place in almost all places captured by Russia.
"Rape was widespread in Kherson and Kharkiv regions, everywhere, in every territory that was occupied, there were not only cases of rape and other sexual violence, but also torture on a massive scale. In many cases, torture was combined with sexual violence," he said.
