Serhiy Kuznetsov, after being detained by the Italian police Photo: Not supplied / WillWest News / Profimedia
The Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court, canceled on Wednesday the decision to extradite a former Ukrainian army captain, the alleged coordinator of the operation to sabotage the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, ANSA and DPA report, quoted by Agerpres.
The Court of Cassation surprisingly annulled the decision by which the Court of Appeal had ordered the extradition to Germany of Serhii Kuznetsov, arrested on August 21 in the Rimini area, based on a European arrest warrant, on charges of sabotaging the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Germany.
The case will now be sent back to another court, which will make a new decision.
At the hearing, the General Prosecutor's Office requested that one of the grounds of the appeal submitted by the defense be accepted, for alleged incorrect legal characterization of the facts in the European arrest warrant.
The Ukrainian is currently in a high-security prison in northern Italy. His lawyer said he may apply for his release.
German investigators believe that Serhii Kuznetsov (49 years old) led a team of seven people, including four divers. The group allegedly rented a yacht, called “Andromeda”, in Germany, with which they sailed off the Baltic Sea.
Another suspect, the Ukrainian Volodimir Z. (46 years old), was arrested in Poland and is in the custody of the authorities of this country. He is believed to have been one of the divers. A Polish court is to decide on Friday whether the Ukrainian can be extradited to Germany for trial.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently declared that “it is not in the interest” of his country for Volodymyr Z. to be extradited, appreciating that it is not the attack on these gas pipelines through which Russia exports gas to Germany that is a problem, but the fact that they were built.
“The problem of Europe, the problem of Ukraine, the problem of Lithuania and Poland is not that Nord Stream 2 was blown up, but that it was built,” Tusk claimed. “It is certainly not in Poland's interest (…) to hand over this citizen to a foreign country,” he added.
