Extradition and human rights

The significance of extradition is determined by its functions. Being enshrined in international legal acts and intergovernmental agreements, it characterizes the cooperation of countries in combating crime, restoring social justice, strengthening international legal order, and implementing the principle of inevitability of punishment for individuals who commit crimes in one state and then hide in the territory of another state. With its preventive potential, extradition exerts a deterrent effect and ensures the social rehabilitation of convicts. The study of extradition systems as one of the most important forms of international cooperation remains a relevant task for the harmonization and unification of international law and the development of a unified model for more effective development and implementation of extradition procedures, including the protection of human rights. In extradition, questions of the prohibition of the death penalty, as well as the prevention of discrimination, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, primarily arise. In preparing this study, the author used methods such as formal-legal, comparative, as well as methods of analysis, induction, and deduction. The rules prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading forms of treatment or punishment are universal, non-derogable, and are enshrined not only in special international and national acts regulating extradition but also in international humanitarian law acts. The sufficiency of guarantees provided by the authority of a state with relevant powers according to national legislation, based on the meaning of international legal acts, should be recognized at a level that unconditionally testifies to the non-enforcement of the death sentence by the requesting state, if it has already been imposed, or the refusal of the court to impose the death penalty. The dialectical contradiction between providing legal assistance within the framework of intergovernmental cooperation in the fight against crime and ensuring human rights during extradition lies in the very nature of these institutions. The collision can be avoided by legislatively ensuring the compatibility of legal norms that form their legal basis, in which the states participating in the extradition procedure should be interested. When there is a threat to fundamental human rights, international institutions and national courts acknowledge the priority of human rights arising from international or intergovernmental human rights treaties.