FIDU – Italian Federation for Human Rights – Italian Helsinki Committee – promotes the protection of human rights and the rule of law through monitoring and reporting activities carried out worldwide. After receiving information about Vladislav Bîcu’s case, having followed several cases related to abuse of Interpol and promoted further improvement of preventive and subsequent scrutiny of requests submitted by abusive states, we would like to draw the attention of Danish authorities on the risk of the abuse of Interpol systems by authoritarian countries. Specifically, post-USSR countries are holding the leading position in terms of the abuse of Interpol mechanisms and extradition procedures.
FIDU was one of the international organizations that launched a worldwide campaign in support of Interpol reform. In 2017-2019, the European Parliament and PACE published several reports on the abuse of Interpol and extradition. All these reports referred to the expert research and recommendations of the non-governmental organizations working in the field, especially the Open Dialog Foundation and FIDU. In addition, FIDU, together with the Arrested Lawyers Initiative, on 16.11.21 submitted a Civil Society Resolution adopted by over 60 NGOs and experts calling on the 89th General Assembly of Interpol to improve its mechanisms in terms of transparency in order to ensure that INTERPOL complies with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In such Resolution, the signatories expressed concerns about the ongoing abuse of the INTERPOL mechanisms including Red Notices and Stolen and Lost travel Document database by authoritarian regimes, especially China, Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Moldova and Turkey.
A striking example of how post-soviet countries are using international search mechanisms is given by the case of William Browder, British citizen, leader of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, who became a victim of politically motivated Red Notice requests issued by Russia.
Vladislav Bîcu’s case seems to be another example of the abuse of Interpol and extradition mechanisms by a post-Soviet country. The persecution of activists and political opponents in Moldova, in particular, was discussed on 20.02.2020 during a hearing organized by the Open Dialog Foundation in the framework of the OSCE PA in Vienna and on 07.02.2020 during a conference organised by FIDU, the Open Dialogue Foundation and the Italian National Forensic Council in Rome.
The case of Vladislav Bîcu, Moldovan and Romanian citizen, actual resident of Germany, represents for FIDU an example of abusive use of Interpol and State-to-State cooperation.
Vladislav Bîcu was born on 8 September 1981 and emigrated in 2014 to Germany, where he is living together with his wife and their 3 children. On 18 November 2021, while Mr. Bîcu and his family were traveling to Denmark, he was stopped during a Covid pass control for an advanced check under suspicion of being flagged in Interpol’s Red Notice. The control revealed that Vladislav Bîcu’s name is listed among Interpol wanted persons, on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Moldovan authorities in April 2017. Immediately after, he was arrested and transferred to a detention facility in the city of Aabenraa, Denmark. At the moment, Vladislav Bîcu may have to face extradition from Denmark to Moldova, where he would be kept in inhuman conditions and subjected to unfair investigation and trial.
Inadmissibility of extradition due to the political nature of the prosecution, the serious threat of inhuman treatment and unfair trial in Moldova.
Vladislav Bîcu is at risk of extradition to Moldova. International law prohibits extradition in cases of political persecution, as well as when there is a risk that the person may be tortured and subject to an unfair trial. This is stated in the UN Convention against Torture, the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Convention on Extradition, the European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. According to the information that FIDU received from Vladislav Bîcu’s lawyers, the indictment bill issued against him contains the following assertions: ”in January 2015, Vladislav Bîcu, being in Chisinău, Moldova and having the intention to obtain benefits from labour exploitation, contacted several persons ….”. Lawyers are delineating this statement as totally false, underlining that in 2015 Vladislav Bîcu was no longer living in Moldova, the country he left and never returned to since 2014. This fact was also confirmed by the verification procedure that he went through when he applied for his residence in Germany. Documents dating back to January 2015 have shown that he was already in Germany and not in Moldova at that time. Also, German authorities found no criminal records on his name. Lawyers are emphasizing that the prosecutor’s position hasn’t been confirmed by any document or evidence and it seems that the criminal case was used only as a pretext for obtaining a warrant and therefore use the Interpol to persecute Vladislav. We had obtained sufficient data to believe that the case itself as well as the warrant were orchestrated on demand, being a result of abuse of power, used against Vladislav Bîcu and that all this story, extraordinary in nature, took place because of an influent person (very close to high level Moldovan officials, including the former President of Moldova) who was revenging on him for a private matter of conflict.
In Moldova, Vladislav Bîcu is at risk of inhuman treatment. The use of torture and inhuman treatments, as well as the precarious conditions in Moldovan pre-trial detention centres and colonies remain of a systemic nature. Moldovan law enforcement agencies and courts usually turn a blind eye to cases of beatings, torture and murder of prisoners. FIDU, together with the Open Dialog Foundation and other human rights organisations from Moldova, covered the case of Andrei Braguta, a young man who died in a penitentiary in Moldova in 2018, after he was beaten to death by his cell mates. This case, and especially the fact that the police officers and guardians were watching the crime scene and particularly allowed torture that caused the death of the inmate, revealed systemic, structural problems which were not accidental, but were the result of the dysfunctional state machinery. Policies, laws, departmental regulations should have been changed and punishment systems should be introduced for those who do not comply. Yet all this measures remain only on paper and no real improvement of the disastrous situation in Moldovan penitentiary system is obtained.
Vladislav Bîcu is not expecting a fair trial in Moldova. According to Council of Europe Office in Chisinău, unfair trials and arbitrary arrests in Moldova remain a matter of serious concerns. Pre-trial detention was and still is excessively used in the Republic of Moldova due to the systemic shortcomings and deficiencies of the legal system as well as the policies deliberately pursued by the authorities, including judiciary and prosecution. In February 2020, the Prosecutor General acknowledged the political motivation behind a prosecution by his predecessor, and announced a review of 38 criminal cases.
By December 2020, in none of these cases the conviction was quashed and not a single criminal proceeding, out of those which had been recognised as politically motivated, was terminated. Moldovan lawyers are also reporting that the arbitrary pre-trial detention continued to be a serious issue. The high rate of arbitrary remand is still related to insufficient judicial independence and prosecutorial bias by many investigative judges.
FIDU is also concerned by the fact that Vladislav Bîcu was requested by Moldova as a non-EU third country, despite he was flagged in Interpol Red Notice as a Romanian citizen, without any European Arrest Warrant. That means that CCF of Interpol failed to conduct a proper check of the Moldovan request, ignoring the international case law. In this regard, we want to draw the attention of Danish authorities on the fact that on 17 December 2020, the CJEU rendered a decision in the extradition case of a Ukrainian-Romanian national (Case C-398/19 (BY – Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Berlin). The Ukraine sought the extradition from Germany, where the person concerned had moved to in 2012. The case gave the CJEU the opportunity to specify the case law established in the Petruhhin judgment (eucrim 3/2016, 131), in particular as to the conditions under which a EU citizen may be extradited to a third country. In the Petruhhin case – subsequently confirmed by other judgments – the CJEU established that “an EU Member State faced with an extradition request from a third country concerning a citizen of another EU Member State is obliged to initiate a consultation procedure with the Member State of nationality of the EU citizen, thus giving the latter the opportunity to prosecute its citizen by means of a European Arrest Warrant”.
Given the objective and reasonable information provided above, FIDU calls on the competent authorities of Denmark to take into account the facts indicating that extradition of Vladislav Bîcu would be inadmissible under international law. In addition, FIDU also reminds the decisions of other States that have refused to extradite individuals prosecuted by post-soviet authorities for politically motivated reasons.