Belgium

The case concerned an execution European Arrest Warrant issued by Belgium for the enforcement of a custodial sentence. The requested person had not appeared in person at the Belgian proceedings, but the EAW stated that he had chosen domicile at his lawyer’s office and that the lawyer had appeared at three hearings and actually conducted the defence. Relying on the Khuzdar and Höldermann judgments, the District Court of Amsterdam held that article 12(b) OLW was satisfied, since a summons or notice served on a lawyer authorised to conduct the defence and designated to receive service may amount to notification to the requested person. The Court also held that, although the requested person had Dutch nationality, he had expressly declined to rely on the optional refusal ground under article 6a OLW, so the Court did not examine whether surrender could be refused on social reintegration grounds. Finally, an individual detention guarantee concerning detention conditions in Belgium was provided and found sufficient, and surrender was allowed.

The case concerned a European Arrest Warrant issued by the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office for the surrender of a Dutch national for the purposes of prosecution. The requested person opposed surrender on the basis of detention conditions in Belgium, arguing that the individual assurances concerning the prison in Mechelen were insufficient in light of overcrowding, sanitation concerns, staff shortages and risks of violence among detainees. The Amsterdam District Court held that the additional assurances provided by the Belgian authorities removed the previously identified general real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment, since Belgium specifically guaranteed placement in a cell with no more than one other detainee and separated sanitary facilities. The Court also refused to make surrender conditional on a return guarantee under Article 6 OLW, finding that the requested person had not shown sufficiently strong ties with the Netherlands to justify execution of any future sentence there. The surrender to Belgium was therefore allowed

Under the EAW framework, the executing judge is not required to carry out an autonomous assessment of the evidentiary basis. In particular, the reference to “serious indications of guilt” has been removed from Article 17(4) of the relevant law; therefore, their absence does not constitute a legitimate ground for refusing surrender, not even on a discretionary basis. Moreover, precisely the elimination of any autonomous assessment of serious indications of guilt has led to a significant reduction in the documentation accompanying the European Arrest Warrant, with the consequence that a ground of appeal cannot be based on the alleged insufficiency of the supporting documentation.

The case concerned an extradition request submitted by Belgium against an Albanian national sought for prosecution for:- organized drug trafficking;- participation in a criminal organization.Belgian judicial authorities alleged that the requested person participated in a criminal organization involved in large-scale narcotics trafficking and that approximately 3.2 tons of narcotics were connected to the investigation. Belgian authorities issued:- an arrest warrant;- an Interpol Red Notice.The requested person had previously acquired Turkish citizenship exceptionally by Presidential decision in 2020, but his citizenship was later revoked in 2023 on national-security and public-order grounds.The requested person challenged the citizenship-revocation decision before the Council of State (Danıştay), and the administrative litigation remained pending during extradition proceedings.The requested person additionally filed an international-protection application before Turkish migration authorities.The Çankırı Heavy Penal Court found the extradition request admissible.The defence appealed, arguing inter alia that:- the Belgian extradition request lacked sufficiently concrete factual and evidentiary detail;- no adequate explanation existed regarding where, when, and how the alleged offences were committed;- specialty-principle guarantees had not been provided;- pending citizenship and asylum proceedings had not been resolved;- extradition would disproportionately affect the requested person’s family life and children residing in Türkiye.The Turkish Court of Cassation accepted these objections. The Court held that:- the outcome of the citizenship-revocation litigation and international-protection proceedings should have been awaited;- Belgian authorities had not sufficiently substantiated the allegations with concrete evidence such as: bank-transfer records; Sky ECC communication contents; and other investigative materials; - proportionality analysis under Article 11(4) of Law No. 6706 had not been adequately conducted;- Belgium had failed to provide an explicit specialty-principle undertaking under: Article 10(4) of Law No. 6706; Article 14 ECE.The extradition admissibility judgment was therefore quashed.