A court in Warsaw on Friday refused to extradite a Ukrainian man sought by Germany over the 2022 explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, calling the European Arrest Warrant insufficiently supported.
The Warsaw Regional Court also lifted the man’s pretrial detention and ordered his immediate release.
The ruling can be appealed to the Court of Appeals in Warsaw.
Judge Dariusz Łubowski said the case before the court was limited to whether the alleged act could justify executing the warrant, not whether the suspect committed it.
He said the Polish court had received only very general information from German authorities and did not have evidence to review.
Judge Dariusz Łubowski. Photo: PAP/Rafał Guz
The suspect, 49-year-old Volodymyr Zhuravlov, was arrested in Poland in late September under a European Arrest Warrant, known as the EAW, issued by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe.
He is wanted on suspicion of "constitutional sabotage," property destruction, and damaging the Nord Stream pipelines.
In oral reasons, the judge pointed to the wider setting of Russia’s war against Ukraine, ongoing since 2014.
He said that blowing up critical infrastructure in peacetime by intelligence services or terrorists is sabotage and a crime, but that actions by armed forces or special forces during war against an aggressor’s infrastructure are acts of diversion that cannot be crimes.
He added that if Zhuravlov committed the act as part of such a mission, he would enjoy functional immunity, meaning responsibility would attach to a state, potentially Ukraine, rather than to an individual.
The judge also said the explosions occurred in international waters and that Nord Stream is not a German entity.
Law professor and attorney Piotr Kruszyński told Poland's PAP news agency that the decision "sets a precedent."
He said the EAW system rests on mutual trust among European Union member states and is designed to allow swift transfers of suspects or convicts.
Kruszyński said he was surprised by the ruling and warned that Germany could refuse future Polish requests in response.
Three of the four Nord Stream 1 and 2 lines, which carry Russian gas to Germany, were damaged by undersea blasts on September 26, 2022, in the Baltic Sea at a depth of about 80 meters.
Zhuravlov says he had nothing to do with the attack and that he was in Ukraine at the time.
In a related development, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation has overturned a Bologna appeals court decision to extradite another Ukrainian, Serhii K., to Germany in the same investigation, sending the case back for review.
Serhii K., arrested in August near Rimini, also says he was in Ukraine when the explosions occurred.