The District Court in Warsaw has refused to hand over Volodymyr Zhuravlov to the German authorities. Judge Dariusz Łubowski’s decision to revoke the arrest warrant and order the immediate release of the man may prove to be his salvation. A recent case of Germany deporting the family members of a murdered Chechen to Georgia shows what could have awaited the Ukrainian detained in Poland.
Volodymyr Zhuravlov was sought under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by the German Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. The charges against him included suspicion of constitutional sabotage, destruction of property, and damaging the Nord Stream pipeline. He was detained in Poland at the end of September.
Judge Dariusz Łubowski, in his oral justification, outrightly dismantled the German narrative.
“The destruction of a state’s critical infrastructure during peacetime by hostile services or terrorist groups constitutes sabotage. However, actions of this nature undertaken during wartime, a just, defensive war, against the critical infrastructure of the aggressor, cannot be considered sabotage. They are military operations of a diversionary nature and can under no circumstances be deemed crimes,” stated Judge Łubowski.
A Frightening Example from Germany
What might have awaited Zhuravlov if the Polish court, at the prosecution’s request, had handed him over to Germany? The answer may lie in a recent case highlighted by Grzegorz Kuczyński.
“Scandal. Germany has deported 12 members of the family of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen veteran murdered in 2019 in Berlin by a Russian agent. These people fear for their lives. They were sent to a country ruled by a pro-Russian government,”
wrote Kuczyński on X.
Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was murdered in Berlin in 2019 by an agent of the Russian secret services. Although his death was a direct result of Moscow’s covert operations, the German authorities deported 12 members of his family (including his brother, Zurab Khangoshvili) to Georgia. These people now have legitimate reasons to fear for their lives.
The deportation of the Khangoshvili family demonstrates how German authorities may treat individuals who are, even indirectly, connected to cases with political or geopolitical overtones. If Germany, without hesitation, deported the family of a victim of a Russian assassination, what might happen to a person accused of sabotaging Nord Stream? This context lends particular weight to the arguments of Zhuravlov’s defense, which pointed to the political nature of the case and the politicization of the German judiciary.
Concerns about the violation of human rights and freedoms in the event of extradition cease to sound like an abstract legal theory when contrasted with the concrete example of the deportation of Khangoshvili’s brother and other family members.
The case of the Khangoshvili family shows that the defense’s fears of human rights violations in the event of extradition were not unfounded. In light of the controversial actions of the German authorities, the Polish court’s decision may well prove to be Zhuravlov’s salvation. Without it, he might have ended up deported to Russia, and from there, he almost certainly would not have returned alive.