Extradition Lawyers
An extradition lawyer defends a person against a request from one country to another to hand them over for prosecution or to serve a sentence. The work runs on two tracks at once: the court proceedings in the country where the person is held, and the international alert that usually precedes them — most often an Interpol Red Notice. Which arguments are available depends on the treaty between the two countries and on the law of the country where the person is detained, so the first task is always to establish both.
Extradition Process
- Request: A foreign country formally requests extradition of an individual, accused or convicted of a crime, through diplomatic channels or an extradition treaty.
- Arrest and Detention: If located in the requested country, the individual may be arrested and detained for the extradition proceedings.
- Hearing: A court determines the individual’s eligibility for extradition, considering if the crime is recognized in both countries, the evidence’s sufficiency, and the fairness of the trial in the requesting country.
- Decision: The court decides on the extradition request. If granted, the individual is extradited for trial or to serve a sentence. If denied, they may be released.
- Appeal: The individual can appeal a granted extradition to a higher court.
- Extradition: After legal appeals, if granted, the individual is extradited to face trial or serve a sentence.
- Sentence: If convicted, the individual serves the sentence in the requesting country and may be returned home upon completion.
Extradition Lawyers legal services
At Collegium of International Lawyers LP, our services in extradition matters include:
- Pre-Extradition Guidance: We offer strategic advice and make preemptive appeals before the Secretariat authorities when Interpol hasn’t initiated extradition.
- Collaboration: Our team, including Immigration, Asylum, and Nationality experts, collaborates to counter diplomatic pressures in extradition cases.
- Detention Consultation: We advise clients on surrender procedures and ensure legal support during questioning to impact proceedings positively and facilitate bail.
- Extradition Defense: Our attorneys formally challenge extradition requests in court, leveraging expert insights and comprehensive case analysis.
- Legal Updates: We constantly update our knowledge and inform clients about the latest developments in extradition law.
- Extradition Dismissal Efforts: We compile case laws, synthesize arguments, and consult international lawyers to build a strong defense against extradition.
- Negotiations: When beneficial, we negotiate with official representatives to find a mutually agreeable solution, always prioritizing our clients’ interests.
- High Court Representation: Our lawyers represent clients in appeals to the highest courts, including the Supreme Court and the ECHR, striving for favorable outcomes.
- Global Prevention of Extradition: We provide expert legal services to prevent extradition internationally.
- Family Consideration: Recognizing the impact on families, we focus on innovative strategies to minimize the hardship of separation due to extradition.
What is an Extradition Treaty?
An extradition treaty specifies conditions for extradition between two countries, including a defined list of crimes eligible for extradition. Extradition can also occur without a treaty, based on diplomatic relations.
Key principles in an extradition treaty include:
- Specificity: Extradition applies only to crimes listed in the treaty.
- Prima Facie Requirement: The requested country must believe there’s sufficient evidence against the wanted person.
- Fair Trial Assurance: The fugitive is entitled to a fair trial post-extradition.
- Crime Specificity: Extradition must be for the crime committed in the requesting country.
- Dual Criminality: The crime must be illegal in both the sending and requesting countries.
Purpose of Extradition
Extradition of a fugitive is driven by several key reasons:
- Mutual Justice: To ensure criminals are not unpunished, countries cooperate to bring offenders to justice.
- National Interests: Countries protect their interests by surrendering wanted persons.
- Deterrence: Extradition serves as a warning to criminals that they cannot escape punishment by fleeing to other countries.
- International Cooperation: It facilitates closer international collaboration in solving crimes.
- Optimal Trial Conditions: The requesting nation is typically better equipped to try the offender, having direct access to evidence.
Alternatives to international extradition
- Waiver: The wanted person voluntarily agrees to transfer to the requesting country, bypassing the extradition process.
- Deportation: Some countries choose to deport the wanted individual, sidestepping the formal extradition process.
- Extraordinary Rendition: This involves forcibly removing a fugitive from a refuge country, often bypassing judicial processes, although this is considered illegal by human rights groups.
- Foreign Prosecution: The country where the fugitive is located prosecutes them, especially if they are a national and not subject to extradition.
How do we work?
We specialize in cases related to International and European arrest warrants in various countries such as Albania, Australia, Switzerland, USA and others. We provide advice and support in extradition matters, as well as expert opinions and advice on criminal law and procedure.
We advise clients on their rights and obligations under mutual legal assistance agreements, how best to prevent risks and how to interact with investigative authorities. Our lawyers also advise many individuals in connection with Interpol Red Notices, which are issued at the request of an Interpol member country indicating that it is seeking the provisional arrest of a person for the purpose of extradition. In extradition, WFP and Interpol cases, we have excellent contacts with leading local lawyers in other jurisdictions and we often work with them to achieve the best results for our clients.
Even if you only suspect that an extradition request is on the way or that Interpol may be processing data relating to you, it is worth being prepared. Taking preventive measures can also allow us to avoid unexpected arrest and put in place procedures that maximize your chances of being released on bail.
Grounds for resisting an extradition request
Extradition is refused more often than people expect, but the grounds are technical and have to be raised in the right forum. The list below sets out the arguments that recur across treaties; which of them apply in a given case depends on the treaty and on the law of the country where the person is held.
- Dual criminality. The conduct must be a criminal offence in both countries. If what is alleged is not an offence where the person is held, the request fails at the threshold.
- Political character. Most treaties exclude offences of a political character, and the same prohibition runs through Interpol’s own rules — which is why the notice and the extradition case are argued together.
- Human rights. Surrender can be refused where it would expose the person to an unfair trial, to ill-treatment, or to conditions of detention that breach fundamental rights.
- Rule of specialty. Where extradition is granted, the requesting state may prosecute only for the offences on which it was granted — not for whatever it adds afterwards.
- Already tried for the same conduct. A person who has been convicted or acquitted of the same conduct cannot be surrendered to be tried for it again.
- Passage of time and health. In a number of jurisdictions delay in bringing the request, or the person’s medical condition, can bar surrender or make it disproportionate.
Grounds are not raised in a vacuum: they have to be supported by the case papers from the requesting country, and those papers are often incomplete when the request first arrives.
If you have just learned about an extradition request
The first days matter more than any later stage, because decisions on detention and on the timetable are taken early and are hard to reverse.
- Do not travel until the position is clear: a request that has not yet produced an arrest in one country can do so at the next border.
- Obtain the request itself and the underlying case file, not a summary of them.
- Check whether an Interpol notice or diffusion exists in parallel, and if it does, open a challenge to it — see how a Red Notice is removed.
- Establish which treaty governs the request, and whether the country where you are has refused similar requests before.
Country-by-country practice differs sharply, including between states that look similar on paper. Our notes on individual pairs are collected below, and the question of which countries refuse requests altogether is covered separately in our guide to countries with no extradition treaty.
Extradition between specific countries
