The case concerned an Albanian request for execution extradition based on a final one-year prison sentence for escape and possession and manufacture of false identification documents. The requested person challenged the decision granting extradition, arguing that he had already fully served the sentence in Italy through extradition custody and that the Albanian authorities had themselves indicated that they no longer had an interest in surrender. The Italian Supreme Court upheld the appeal. It held that, where the sentence for which extradition is sought has already been entirely served in Italy through precautionary custody in the extradition proceedings, surrender for execution is barred, since crediting pre-surrender detention against the sentence is a fundamental principle of the Italian legal order and a fundamental right of the person. The Court therefore annulled the surrender decision without remand, declared the existing precautionary measure terminated, and ordered the requested person’s release unless detained on other grounds.

For offences that provide for “thresholds” of punishability, the requirement of double criminality does not entail exact correspondence between the statutory definitions or the legal treatment of the offence, but only that the conduct be punishable under criminal law in both jurisdictions for the same underlying facts. That said, the blood alcohol level detected is below the threshold which, under Italian law, qualifies driving as a criminal offence. It follows that the conduct for which the requested person was convicted by the Albanian judicial authorities—contrary to what was held by the Naples Court of Appeal—would not have criminal relevance in Italy, being, at most, punishable only as an administrative offence. Accordingly, the requirement of double criminality is not satisfied.

The Court of Appeal cannot merely assert the adequacy of a non-custodial measure (such as an obligation to report to the police) without providing any reasoning—even in concise terms—on the existence of a risk of absconding. This is all the more so where the same Court highlights factors—such as the limited overall sentence to be served in the requesting State, the requested person’s strong ties to the territory, the availability of a fixed residence in Italy, a lease agreement, and a permanent employment contract—which not only fail to support such a risk, but in fact mitigate it.

In matters of extradition to a foreign State, for the purposes of assessing the ground for refusal related to the person’s health conditions under Article 705(2)(c-bis) of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, the Court of Appeal may not confine itself to verifying whether the healthcare facilities in the requesting State are adequate to meet the extraditee’s therapeutic needs. It must also take into account the concrete adverse impact that the surrender procedure itself may have, including pathological complications associated with transfer abroad, as well as the need to ensure continuity of ongoing treatment (case concerning the failure to consider the health condition of a person suffering from HIV and in need of life-saving medication not available in Albanian prisons).

In extradition proceedings, the acquisition of information concerning detention conditions outside the adversarial process renders such information inadmissible and results in the nullity of a decision granting extradition where it is based on that material. the case concerned a situation in which the court of appeal relied on a communication from the foreign authority received after the hearing had taken place, on which the defence had no opportunity to comment.