🇮🇹 Italy → 🇺🇸 United States

With regard to the issue of limitation periods under the law of the requesting State, international practice relating to the application of treaties that provide for the statute of limitations as a ground for refusal of extradition shows that it is not for the requested State to autonomously and directly determine whether the limitation period has expired. This is for the obvious reason that such an assessment may involve complex legal evaluations that must be carried out exclusively by the authorities of the requesting State, as also affirmed, for example, in the Explanatory Reports prepared by the Council of Europe for the 1957 European Convention on Extradition and its Fourth Protocol. Accordingly, it is for the requesting State to provide, where appropriate and even upon request by the requested State, information as to whether or not the “prosecution is time-barred”. Such indications, being official and formal in nature, cannot be subject to further verification nor, a fortiori, to review by the requested State.