🇹🇷 Turkey → 🇪🇸 Spain

The case concerned an extradition request submitted by the Kingdom of Spain against a Croatian national sought for:- drug trafficking;- membership in a criminal organization.Spanish judicial authorities alleged that the requested person participated in an international cocaine-trafficking network involving approximately 980 kilograms of cocaine transported from Brazil toward Spain through maritime routes.Spanish authorities issued:- an international arrest warrant;- a European Arrest Warrant;- and a provisional detention order.The requested person was apprehended in İstanbul following intelligence and operational cooperation involving Europol and Turkish anti-narcotics authorities. A forged passport was allegedly discovered during the arrest.The Kırklareli 1st Heavy Penal Court found the extradition request admissible under Law No. 6706.The defence appealed, arguing inter alia that:- the extradition request insufficiently specified the offences and applicable legal provisions;- the alleged offence may not have fallen within Spanish territorial jurisdiction because the narcotics seizure occurred on the high seas;- the organization offence had not been separately analyzed;- fair-trial and defence-right guarantees had not been sufficiently examined;- family and social integration circumstances had not been assessed under Article 11(4) of Law No. 6706.The Turkish Court of Cassation partially accepted these objections. The Court held that:- extradition admissibility must be separately assessed for each offence forming the basis of the request;- the lower court failed to separately evaluate the “membership in a criminal organization” allegation;- Spanish authorities had not sufficiently provided the applicable legal provisions and explanatory legal framework required under Article 12(2)(c) of the European Convention on Extradition;- supplementary information should therefore have been requested pursuant to Article 18(2) of Law No. 6706 and Article 13 ECE.The extradition admissibility judgment was therefore quashed.