Today, the Court of Appeal (civil) in The Hague overturned the judgment of the preliminary injunction court and prohibited the State from extraditing our client to Rwanda. The Court concludes that if our client is extradited to Rwanda, there is a real risk that he will be exposed to a flagrant violation of Article 6 ECHR. The Court rules differently in this case than in previous rulings in extradition cases concerning Rwanda. The Court considers that since then more has become known about Rwanda's violation of human rights: the human rights situation did not improve after 2016. In particular, more evidence is available that political opponents of the regime are regularly denied the right to a fair trial. According to the Court, there is a real risk that if our client is extradited to Rwanda he, as an opponent of President Kagame's regime, will not receive a fair trial. The Court therefore prohibited the State from executing this extradition request.
The Court also attached great importance to an earlier case in which extradition was not allowed by the District Court of The Hague (criminal court) and this decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. This case was also handled by our firm.
Our client was represented in this case by attorneys Frederieke Dölle, Göran Sluiter and Tom de Boer.