Latvia

The Amsterdam District Court issued an interim decision in proceedings concerning a Latvian European Arrest Warrant for the enforcement of a sentence. Following an earlier interim ruling and additional information from the Latvian authorities, the Court accepted that the requested person would most likely be detained in Liepāja Prison but held that the information provided remained too general to establish how he would be concretely protected against violence and other degrading effects associated with the informal prison caste system. The Court therefore found that the previously identified general risk had not been removed in the requested person’s individual case and concluded that he faced a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment if surrendered to Latvia. It consequently postponed the decision on surrender under Article 11(2) OLW, reopened and suspended the proceedings, and allowed a reasonable period for further information or changed circumstances capable of removing that individual risk.

Latvia sought the requested person’s surrender under an execution EAW to serve the remainder of an eleven-year custodial sentence. The District Court of Amsterdam reiterated that detainees in Latvia face a general real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment arising from the informal prison caste system, including inter-prisoner violence and the degrading treatment of prisoners belonging to the lowest caste. The information provided by the Latvian authorities did not establish with sufficient certainty where the requested person would ultimately be detained or identify the concrete individual measures that would protect him from violence and the other adverse effects of the caste system. The Court therefore reopened and suspended the proceedings and requested further information concerning the likely place of detention and the specific protective measures to be implemented.