The case concerned a person sought by Kuwait for extradition in relation to a money laundering offence and subject to extradition detention in Italy. Following an earlier annulment by the Italian Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal of Rome replaced custody in prison with house arrest at the requested person’s home in Rome, with electronic monitoring, relying essentially on his health conditions. Kuwait challenged that decision, arguing that the Court of Appeal had failed to assess the continuing concreteness and actuality of the risk of flight, despite the requested person’s foreign nationality, lack of stable ties in Italy, and the fact that the extradition proceedings had already been concluded. The Italian Supreme Court upheld the appeal. It held that, in extradition proceedings, the existence of a flight risk justifying coercive measures must be assessed concretely and currently, on the basis of recent factual indicators showing a real and foreseeable risk that the person may abscond and jeopardize Italy’s international obligation to secure surrender. The Court found that the Court of Appeal had merely replaced prison custody with a less restrictive measure on the basis of the requested person’s precarious health, without explaining whether a concrete flight risk still existed and, if so, whether house arrest with electronic monitoring was sufficient to address it. Since the previous annulment had expressly required the lower court to reassess both the existence of flight risk and the adequacy of any alternative measure, the order was annulled with remand for a fresh assessment.

Deterioration of health conditions and incompatibility of the detainee’s health conditions with the prison regime: when ruling on an application for revocation or replacement of the measure, the Court of Appeal must take into account the content of the defence submissions where new elements are alleged in comparison with the previous assessment.

In matters of extradition for prosecution to a foreign State, the Italian judicial authority, when assessing the existence of serious indications of guilt as required under Article 705(1) of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure in the absence of an extradition treaty with the requesting State, may not apply the “simplified” evidentiary regime set out in Article 16 of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, concluded on 15 November 2000 and implemented by Law No. 146 of 16 March 2006, since that Convention does not have the legal nature of an extradition treaty.