Judge Dariusz Łubowski has decided to refuse the German authorities’ request to extradite Volodymyr Ż. He also lifted the preventive measure of temporary arrest and ordered his immediate release. This is not the first high-profile ruling by this judge. In 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus launched criminal proceedings against Łubowski after he refused to extradite the founder of NEXTA to Belarus.
At the end of September, Volodymyr Ż., a Ukrainian citizen wanted by Germany for allegedly destroying Nord Stream gas-pipeline infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, was detained in Poland under a European Arrest Warrant.
Judge Łubowski dismissed the German request for extradition. In his reasoning, he emphasized that the purpose of this proceeding was not to determine whether the wanted man had committed the act alleged by the German side, but only to establish whether the act could constitute grounds for executing the European Arrest Warrant.
“The Polish court has no evidence in this case, as the German authorities have provided only very general information,” he stressed.
This is not the first time the judge has made headlines. In 2022, Łubowski refused to extradite Belarusian opposition activist and NEXTA journalist Stsiapan Putila. For that decision, the Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal case against him.
In his justification regarding the Belarusian oppositionist, the judge ruled that “one cannot hand someone over to a judicial system that, in reality, does not exist.” He also pointed to the systemic human-rights violations in Belarus.
“That country is demanding the extradition of a completely innocent person only because he holds different views than the psychopathic dictator,” he remarked.
Earlier, in July 2019, Judge Łubowski refused to extradite Denis Lisov to the Swedish authorities. Lisov was wanted under a European Arrest Warrant after taking his daughters from a Muslim foster family.
“Denis Lisov was placed in a hopeless situation, a real trap. His children were taken away, and at the same time, he was given conditions for regaining them that were impossible to meet, since he had not been granted permanent residency. The authorities did not guarantee him proper contact rights with his daughters, and the foster family was placed at a considerable distance from his place of residence,” Judge Łubowski argued at the time.
In 2020, the judge also refused to extradite to the Netherlands the parents of an autistic child who had fled that country fearing they would lose custody of their son.
“It does not require any specialist psychological or medical knowledge to state that every child—and especially an autistic child—needs, above all, parental love, calm, and a sense of security that only parents, and particularly the mother, can provide in the safety of their home. Such conduct should be regarded as utterly inhuman and barbaric,” the judge wrote in his decision.
He further pointed out that in the Netherlands, a child on the autism spectrum “after turning 12 may be deprived of life by doctors without the consent, or even the knowledge, of their parents.”