Out-of-court council of the County Court in Velika Gorica, Croatia, issued a first instance decision to extradite a Bosnian citizen A.C. wanted by the Tunisian authorities on suspicion of his involvement in the murder of a Tunisian man Mohammed Zawahri, an aeroplane engineer allegedly connected to Hamas.
“The Court has established that all the requirements for the extradition of A.C., inhabited in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the purpose of conducting criminal proceedings before the first instance Court of the Republic of Tunisia, have been met,” the Court said in an official statement.
According to HINA Agency, the Court found that the criminal offence in question can be subsumed under the criminal offence of terrorism as a complex criminal act, punishable by punishable by imprisonment from three to 15 years.
When it comes to A.C.’s complaint that the criminal offence he was charged with is punishable by death penalty in Tunisia, the Croatian Curt said that the Tunisian Law stipulates that the death penalty is replaced by a 20-year prison sentence. The Court added that that the Croatian Justice Ministry asked the Tunisian Justice Ministry about the conduct of the death penalty in this country, to which the Tunisian Ministry said that the death penalty has not been imposed since 1992.
A.C. was arrested on March 13th at Zagreb airport, based on a Tunisian Interpol arrest warrant on suspicion of a murder of Zawahri who was a member of Hamas’s military wing. He was killed in 2016, near his home in the Tunisian town of Sfax.