Colombia

Following his surrender to the United States through Colombia, the petitioner sought credit against his U.S. drug-trafficking sentence for approximately six years spent in detention in Venezuela, claiming that he had been held there at the behest of the United States pending extradition pursuant to an INTERPOL Red Notice issued in 2014. The District Court for the District of Puerto Rico examined the Venezuelan and Colombian documentary record and found that the Venezuelan detention had not been shown to result from the U.S. Red Notice: Venezuelan authorities did not confirm that the petitioner was the person sought through INTERPOL until May 9, 2019, and only thereafter notified the United States of the deadline for submitting a formal extradition request. The Court therefore rejected the claim for credit under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b), emphasizing that lengthy foreign detention does not qualify as extradition-related custody merely because the requested person characterizes it as such; the connection with the U.S. request must be established by the record. The Court also noted that authority to calculate credit for prior custody rests with the Bureau of Prisons rather than the sentencing court.

Colombia requested extradition for the enforcement of a 72-month prison sentence imposed for aggravated theft. The appellant argued that his intention to settle permanently in Argentina should prevent surrender. The Prosecutor General’s Office considered the appeal formally deficient and, in any event, found that residence or social ties do not in themselves constitute a bar to extradition, which is a lawful restriction on freedom of movement. It therefore recommended that the Supreme Court confirm the decision granting extradition.

France submitted a complementary request for the extradition of a French national already detained in Colombia in connection with two previous extradition proceedings, seeking his prosecution for nine charges arising from alleged organised-crime activity, including attempted homicide, participation in a criminal association, destruction of property and handling property derived from organised robbery. The Supreme Court examined the formal validity of the request, identity, double criminality, ne bis in idem, limitation periods and the absence of political-offence grounds, finding all applicable constitutional and treaty requirements satisfied. In particular, it held that the conduct alleged by the French authorities constituted criminal offences under both French and Colombian law and therefore met the double criminality requirement. The Court issued a favourable opinion on the complementary extradition request, subject to guarantees concerning speciality, the prohibition of the death penalty and inhuman treatment, and credit for time spent in detention in Colombia.

Venezuela requested the extradition of a Venezuelan national from Colombia for prosecution for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated extortion, obstruction of freedom of commerce, terrorism and aggravated criminal association. In assessing double criminality, the Supreme Court unified its case law and held that an applicable bilateral or multilateral convention incorporated into domestic law may be applied subsidiarily even where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs omitted it from its preliminary opinion. On that basis, the Court relied on the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in addition to the 1911 Bolivarian Extradition Agreement and held that the terrorism charge also satisfied the extradition requirements because its Colombian equivalent carried a sufficiently serious penalty. The Court issued a favourable extradition opinion and declined to determine the requested person’s refugee status, holding that this matter fell within the competence of the executive authorities and that the asylum procedure was still pending.

The interest in filing an appeal—being a condition for the admissibility of any challenge—must be directly linked to the primary and immediate effects of the contested decision, and exists only where the appeal is capable of producing a more favourable situation for the appellant through the removal of a prejudicial measure. In the present case—where surrender had already been carried out—the applicant did not even expressly assert an interest in obtaining a decision to be relied upon for the purposes of Article 314 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure (compensation for wrongful detention). Accordingly, the execution of the surrender to the requesting State results in the appeal being declared inadmissible due to a supervening lack of interest, where the requested person challenges the refusal to revoke or declare ineffective the custodial measure imposed during the extradition proceedings.