Extradition from the UK to Russia has now been effectively halted by the UK chief magistrate’s decision to block a series of Russian requests late last year. Four separate cases of individuals were grouped together and heard before Westminster magistrates’ court in December 2019.
During the initial hearings, Russia’s legal counsel apparently made repeated trips to the Russian consulate during breaks, only to return with – in the words of the judge – a “rolling series of reactive assurances and ad-hoc proposed means of monitoring” designed to satisfy the tribunal. A High Court judge later agreed with a description of the Russian authorities’ behaviour as “inappropriate and unfair.”
The court eventually refused the requests because of the serious risk that the individuals would be ill-treated in detention if extradited, and that the absence of an independent system of prison monitoring in Russia increased that risk. All four individuals were discharged. London’s High Court later upheld the decision after Russia appealed.
International guarantees
Since the European Court of Human Rights issued a “pilot judgment” in 2012 that found systemic violations in Russian pre-trial detention centres, the Russian authorities have been obliged to prove to the UK courts that individuals will not be held in poor conditions if extradited.
“The burden is automatically reversed,” said Ben Keith, a specialist extradition barrister. “Russia always has to provide diplomatic assurances, and those assurances must be monitored.”
Russian prosecutors have begun to provide detailed information to the UK authorities about the facility that a requested person will be held in, and the material conditions guaranteed to them, including specifications of individual cells by square metre.
The Russian government has formed an action plan in order to tackle the structural issues identified in the ECHR pilot judgment, including chronic overcrowding. Some progress has been made in emptying prisons and remand centres. According to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, the prison population has fallen to historic lows in recent years, with more offenders being sentenced to home curfew rather than custodial terms. Ex-detainees who have suffered abuse in prison are now also able to sue the state for compensation.
But there are concerns that the focus has been too narrowly on improving material conditions, and that not enough is being done to tackle systemic violence within Russia’s prison estate.
“Compensation post factum is simply not enough,” said Sergey Golubok. “The [Russian] Government should prevent cases of inhuman or degrading treatment in its prisons from occurring in the first place.”
UK judges are increasingly fearful that individuals will be at risk of torture if extradited. The chief magistrate in the recent grouped cases expressed shock after watching a now infamous video leaked from a Yaroslavl penal colony in July 2018. The video shows an inmate, Evgeny Makarov, being restrained on a table in an educational work class. Several prison officers brutally beat the soles of his feet with their truncheons and fists as the man screams in agony.
“That’s when the UK courts understood that physical and psychological ill-treatment is a problem in the Russian prison service,” explained Professor Judith Pallot, an expert on Russian prisons at the University of Oxford who has provided compelling evidence to recent extradition tribunals.
Torture of Evgeny Makarov in a Yaroslavl prison, 2017 | Source: Novaya GazetaThe European Prison Rules, which provide Council of Europe member states with good standards for the management of detention facilities, include the independent monitoring of prisons as a key safeguard for the rights of detainees. The Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee (CPT) carries out ad-hoc and timetabled visits to Russian prisons. Russia has not allowed the committee to publish reports of its visits since 2012.
Impasse over monitoring
But it is the present state of Russia’s prison monitoring commissions that has come under particular scrutiny in the British courts.
The commissions were first introduced in 2008 under legislation enacted by the Dmitry Medvedev administration. “It was a good law which gave good powers to the commissions,” said Pallot. Commission members could visit prisons without special permission, assess conditions, speak to detainees and publish reports. The commissions were thus meant to provide public oversight in places of detention.
But according to a recent submission to the Council of Europe by a coalition of Russian human rights NGOs, the monitoring commissions are now in “a state of almost complete paralysis.” In recent years, their ranks have been filled with ex-law enforcement and military personnel.
“The procedure for election [to a commission] is opaque,” said Yana Teplitskaya, who served as a volunteer member of St. Petersburg’s public monitoring commission between 2016 and 2019. With her friend and colleague Ekaterina Kosarevskaya, Teplitskaya formed a working group called 16% within her commission (“We did not want to speak for the whole commission”), publicising serious allegations of torture committed by the local FSB directorate, including those voiced by several men accused in a high-profile terrorism investigation into Russian anarchists.
Network case defendants in court, 10 February 2020 | (c) Kommersant Photo Agency/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reservedNeither Teplitskaya nor Kosarevskaya were readmitted into their monitoring commission at its most recent selection. Regional public chambers select new members from a list of nominees, but are not obliged to explain their choices. “At this stage, the applications of well-known human rights defenders are usually rejected,” Teplitskaya said.
Commission members are also more frequently being refused access to places of detention or are barred from bringing cameras and recording equipment into prisons.
“The most serious problem is that commission members cannot talk to prisoners in remand centres about torture which may have taken place outside of the facility,” Teplitskaya said. Recent legislation has resulted in prison staff routinely interrupting conversations between commission members and detainees if they veer “off-topic”.
“At present, there is simply no effective independent oversight,” concluded Teplitskaya. “No-one should be extradited for detention in a Russian prison.”
UK judges have previously proved willing to accept Russian assurances. Two individuals were extradited from the UK in 2017 and 2018 (on the basis of arrests made prior to 2016). In both of these cases, Russia did not breach its assurances, although one of the men was briefly confined in unsuitably cramped conditions during his lengthy transit to a remote prison colony.
“They were what you might term ‘common criminals’,” said Ben Keith, whose typical clients are businesspeople accused of financial crimes. “The real issue for them is that it is a political prosecution and that there is no prospect of receiving a fair trial. Sometimes the Article 3 [ill-treatment] issue can distract from that.”
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James Dowsett | Radio Free (2020-07-09T00:00:00+00:00) Inside the growing storm over UK-Russia extraditions. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/07/09/inside-the-growing-storm-over-uk-russia-extraditions/
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