High Court quashes extradition order to Armenia and clarifies duty of candour: Graeme Hall appears

On 23 December 2022, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Jay handed down judgment discharging Mr Stanciu from an extradition request from the Government of Armenia. The High Court found that Armenian prison conditions exposed Mr Stanciu to a real risk of inter-prisoner violence, and that the Armenian government had not put in place reasonable measures to protect Mr Stanciu from such violence. In turn, extradition represented a real risk of detention in inhuman or degrading prison conditions, contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In so doing, the High Court quashed the decision of District Judge Snow, which had found that Armenian prison conditions represented no such risk.

The High Court’s decision is important for a number of reasons. First, the High Court found that the Armenian government did not comply with its duty of candour when it failed to inform Judge Snow of the pending publication of a report by the European Committee on the Prevention against Torture regarding the conditions of its prisons. Second, the High Court approached Armenia’s evidence with scepticism as some of the information provided by Armenia was “apt to mislead”; much of Armenia’s evidence was “generic, stereotypical and aspirational”; and, further, its evidence was in important respects contradicted by evidence from other authoritative sources. Third, the High Court was concerned that the measures put forward by Armenia to protect Mr Stanciu from violence (such as the prosecution of violent inmates) were reactive rather than protective and did not explain how the risk of inter-prisoner would be “obviated at source rather than addressed after the event”.

Graeme Hall was instructed by Alison Fong San Pin of Lawrence & Co. Solicitors.

The judgment can be found here.