🇭🇷 Croatia →

The case concerned a request by the People’s Republic of China for the extradition of Sun Bocheng from Croatia for prosecution in relation to several alleged offences, including participation in a criminal organisation, fraud, forced trade, illegal gambling activities, and violent conflict-related offences. The County Court in Zagreb examined the statutory extradition requirements offence by offence. It found that some elements of the request, especially those concerning the alleged criminal organisation, were sufficiently described and could in principle satisfy requirements such as double criminality and absence of limitation. However, for several other offences the Court found that the Chinese request did not provide sufficiently individualized evidence to establish substantiated suspicion against the requested person. More importantly, the Court held that extradition to China would be incompatible with Croatia’s obligations under Articles 2, 3 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Relying also on the European Court of Human Rights’ case law, including Liu v. Poland, the Court considered the risks linked to the death penalty, inhuman or degrading treatment, and lack of fair trial guarantees. It therefore concluded that the legal conditions for extradition were not met and refused surrender to China.