The prohibition against granting extradition in cases where there are grounds to believe that the person sought will be subjected to persecutory or discriminatory acts, or in any event to acts constituting a violation of fundamental human rights, applies exclusively where such a situation is attributable to a normative or factual choice of the requesting State, irrespective of contingencies extraneous to institutional policies and in respect of which legal protection remains available.

Serbia has initiated a concrete programme to improve its judicial and penitentiary institutions with a view to its prospective accession to the European Union, and significant progress has been recorded, to the extent that the number of violations of the European Convention on Human Rights does not appear to deviate from the average of other States parties to the Convention. It must also be noted that the CPT report acknowledges such progress and that, insofar as can be inferred from the appeal, certain issues are highlighted relating to violent conduct by prison officers, as well as conditions of overcrowding and inadequate sanitary facilities. However, the risk of being subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be asserted in a general manner, but must be specifically substantiated on the basis of reliable and duly updated sources. In the present case, the submissions are generic and rely on elements which are not currently capable of demonstrating the existence and extent of the alleged risk. In particular, nothing has been alleged as to the concrete likelihood, in this case, of risks connected to violent conduct aimed at extracting confessions, while the references to prison conditions are based on general observations, moreover within the framework of a system undergoing development.