Israel

The requested person was placed under precautionary custody in Italy pursuant to Article 715 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure in connection with an extradition request submitted by a foreign State. The defence challenged the lawfulness of the custodial measure, arguing that the requesting State had failed to transmit the underlying arrest warrant within the mandatory 40-day period provided by the European Convention on Extradition and Italian procedural law. The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation annulled a previous decision rejecting the revocation request and remanded the matter to the Court of Appeal for verification of the timely transmission of the foreign arrest warrant. On remand, the Milan Court of Appeal found that the relevant arrest warrant had only been transmitted several months after the arrest of the requested person and therefore outside the statutory deadline. The court consequently revoked the precautionary custodial measure and ordered the immediate release of the requested person.

Extradition is permissible only if the request is accompanied by the judicial decision constituting the legal basis of the request; therefore, regardless of the procedural stage that gave rise to it, the continuation of a precautionary measure beyond 40 days is never allowed in the absence of the documents required under Article 700 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure and Article 12(2) of the European Extradition Convention, in particular the foreign judicial order imposing the custodial measure.