He was immediately released after almost five months of detention. The Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal issued an unfavorable opinion on Wednesday on the request of the Russian judicial authorities to hand over to them Shamkhal Kerimov, a former MMA wrestler living in Cannes whom they suspect of being involved in a murder.
This 40-year-old Russian, born in Dagestan and father of six children, was arrested on January 4 in the premises of the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture where he had come to file an asylum application. He was the subject of an arrest warrant issued on December 22, 2016 by a Moscow judge investigating the death of a 30-year-old man, shot that year in the parking lot of a Moscow shopping center. Shamkhal Kerimov had since been under extradition to the Aix-en-Provence remand center.
The possibility of a death sentence
On January 25, the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation had transmitted to the French authorities a formal request for extradition but the Russian judicial authorities then no longer responded to subsequent requests from the investigating chamber of the court of call from Aix-en-Provence.
The French judges wanted to know what exact sentence incurred Shamkhal Kerimov, who risked death according to the Russian penal code, depending on possible aggravating circumstances. They had expressly requested a “formal commitment that this sentence would not be requested or imposed”. Despite several postponements of the examination of the case, the investigating chamber took note on Wednesday of the silence of the Russian judicial authorities. “Insofar as there is no concrete answer not to carry out the death penalty, it is necessary to draw the consequences”, explained one of the court advisers, joining the position of the defense of the Russian.
His lawyers, Mes Gérard Baudoux and Camille Friedrich, stressed that Russia having left the Council of Europe, it is no longer a contracting party to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. This would expose their client to inhuman and degrading treatment and to a real risk of being subjected to the death penalty.