Appeal. The case of the Russian hacker Nikulin is not over, it will continue at the Municipal Court in Prague iRADIO
As Martin Sadílek, the lawyer of hacker Jevgenije Nikulin, explained to iROZHLAS.cz, he is filing an appeal because the District Court for Prague 2 did not allow some evidence to be presented. Therefore, he is still demanding full compensation for his client from the Ministry of Justice for his early extradition to the US. The Ministry of Justice has so far paid the Russian hacker a quarter of a million crowns in compensation for non-property damage. But the lawyer demands five times more.
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1,250,000 crowns and another quarter of a million as interest on the sale. Martin Sadílek, the lawyer of the Russian hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin, will continue to sue the Ministry of Justice for such an amount. According to him, he did not agree with the judgment of the District Court for Prague 2 from the end of April this year, which rejected the claim for compensation for the premature extradition of his client to the United States.
The court rejected Nikulin’s lawsuit for extradition to the USA. He demanded 1.25 million for issuing an illegal decision
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“The appeal has already been filed. We disagreed with the verdict. I believe that we will succeed at the Municipal Court in Prague,” said the lawyer, adding that the court confirmed the acceptance of the appeal in mid-June.
What is the case in the circuit court dismissed? The Russian hacker, through his lawyer, sued the Department of Justice for his early extradition to the US, which requested his extradition on the basis of an arrest warrant. Former Minister of Justice Robert Pelán (for ANO) confirmed the extradition in March 2018. This was a case about the possible fact that Nikulin’s case about a possible right to asylum in the Czech Republic was still at the stage of cassation and was being decided by the Supreme Administrative Court.
After all, the judge of the circuit court, Lucie Šenková, also confirmed this in her judgment, which we attach at the end of the article. But she added that nothing has changed with the decision of the Supreme Administrative Court.
“The consequence of the illegality of the decision of the Minister of Justice was that the decision to extradite the plaintiff (Nikulina, editor’s note) it was already done on 3/29/2018 and not until 5/3/2018 (the day when the decision of the Supreme Administrative Court on the cassation complaint filed by Yevgeni Nikulin was made, editor’s note). (…) It cannot be said that the plaintiff was illegally extradited to the United States for criminal prosecution, he was only extradited prematurely,” the judge summarized her conclusions in the judgment.
“Deprived of Rights”
However, lawyer Sadílek considers the premature extradition of his client to be a problem. According to him, the premature extradition of Nikulin prevented the possibility of submitting other remedies, which could have prevented his extradition.
Nikulin, extradited to the USA, received 250,000 from the Czech Republic. The court began to decide whether he will receive additional compensation
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“A constitutional complaint and a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights were also considered against the decision in the administrative procedure. Moreover, we are talking about a hypothesis, so in eventum the court could grant such a constitutional complaint suspensory effect. And all that didn’t happen. Mr. Nikulin was deprived of those rights, because I don’t know how it would turn out, how the Constitutional Court would decide,” reasons for filing the appeal, the lawyer.
According to him, due to the premature extradition, his client did not even have time to provide him with a power of attorney for further management of the case. “That’s what it’s all about here. That unexpectedness had consequences for the damage that followed. Mr. Nikulin thereby lost confidence not only in me, but also in American lawyers. He felt it (premature release to the USA, editor’s note) like kidnapping. The whole mechanism was just wrong. No one knows what would happen in a month,” Sadílek once again alludes to an accelerated release.
But Judge Šenková contradicts this in her judgment. “The court does not believe that the plaintiffs would be prevented from pursuing these other legal remedies through a legal representative, which is ultimately evidenced by the fact that the plaintiff granted his legal representative full power of attorney to file a constitutional complaint dated 6/4/2018 against the decision Minister of Justice. Even this constitutional complaint was filed at a time when the plaintiff was already in fact in the USA,” Šenková writes in the verdict, adding that she sees no reason why Nikulin from the USA could not file a similar power of attorney in the case of his asylum proceedings.
The lawyer Sadílek nevertheless insists on his position and demands the aforementioned loss of trust between him and Nikulin, who did not send him a new power of attorney. “It had an impact on his health and criminal proceedings when, as a result of that step (US release, editor’s note) stop communicating with your advocates. He has also only had minimal contact with me since the deportation. I only received one letter from him,” he explained why he may not be able to file extraordinary remedies such as an appeal or another constitutional complaint, which are tied to the new procedural power of attorney.
Purposeful application for asylum
According to Judge Šenková, the application for asylum, which was decided by the Supreme Administrative Court and which is the subject of the dispute, was submitted without grounds. According to her, the Czechia could provide Nikulin with international protection only in relation to, not the USA. According to her, the request for asylum was purposeful, which is evidenced by the fact that Nikulin is protected only after the decision of the appeals court, which admitted the possibility of the hacker’s extradition.
A US court has sent Russian hacker Nikulin to prison for more than seven years
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“Only in this situation did the plaintiff apply for asylum for protection against extradition to the US, even though the asylum law did not allow for such a thing,” he explains.
Czech police arrested Nikulin in Prague in October 2016 on the basis of an American arrest warrant. Both the Municipal Court in Prague and the High Court in Prague subsequently admitted that he could be extradited to the USA. Against this, Nikulin filed a constitutional complaint, which the Constitutional Court rejected by its decision.
The former Minister of Justice Pelikán then allowed the extradition of the Russian hacker to the USA in March 2018, despite the fact that the cassation complaint at the Supreme Administrative Court had not yet ended. The Constitutional Court sided with Nikulin in this case, saying that the minister revoked his rights. However, the hacker did not receive asylum and was extradited to the United States.
The Ministry paid him a quarter of a million crowns as compensation, of which the District Court for Prague 2 awarded him 12,800 crowns of interest in April.
Nikulin is currently serving a sentence of seven years and four months in prison, to which he was sentenced by a court in San Francisco two years ago. He found the Russian hacker guilty of nine charges. Among other things, the fact that in 2012 he attacked the social networks LinkedIn, Formspring and also the web storage Dropbox, from where he stole data from more than 117 million accounts.
Russia also tried unsuccessfully to extradite Nikulin. Which caused tension not only on the international but also on the domestic scene.
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