The lawyer of 54-year-old Christian James Michel—an accused in the VVIP helicopter scam for whose extradition from Dubai, India is pushing hard—has claimed that Michel is not absconding, that he is very much in Dubai, contrary to media reports in India, and that he is prepared to be extradited once he exhausts all the legal options available to him under UAE law.
Going by what his legal team told The Sunday Guardian, it could be well beyond 10 October that Government of India might be able to extradite him finally.
Rosemary Patrizi, the Italian lawyer who represents Michel in Dubai, while speaking to this newspaper, said that extradition in the UAE is governed under its Law on Mutual Judicial Assistance in Criminal Matters (Federal Law No. 39 of 2006). Under Articles 22 and 23 of the law, Michel has 30 days to appeal against his extradition order which the Dubai appeals court passed on 2 September, he said.
The order reads: “The court decided the possibility of extraditing Christian James Michel to the competent authorities in the Republic of India.”
Deciphering the order, Patrizi said that the court has said that “the possibility of extraditing Michel was there”, but the observation had just come at the first “degree” or the first appeal stage, which means that his legal team has the option to move for the second appeal, for which they have time till 2 October.
The case against Michel was registered at Port police station, Dubai, in February 2017, when the Indian government lodged an application for extradition, after which he was arrested by the Dubai police.
Responding to a query by this correspondent on whether he would surrender if his second appeal too was rejected on or before 2 October, Patrizi said that after that, they had the option to move for the third appeal and, hence, the possibility that Michel might not be extradited to India even after 2 October was very strong.
As per Article 23 of the UAE extradition law, an order passed by the court during second appeal can be challenged within 10 days by the party.
Patrizi claimed: “Christian is presently on bail in Dubai and not absconding. Why should he abscond? Indian media is running fake news that he is missing. You see, as per the law, there are many degrees of appeal for us to go through, and we have gone through only the first one so far. I have right now come back to Italy because I needed a few documents for the case. We have time limit till 2nd of October (to file the second appeal) and I will go back to Dubai next week.”
According to her, Amal Alsubei, whom certain media organisations were quoting as Michel’s lawyer, was not involved in preparing the legal strategy and they had only engaged him as they needed a local lawyer based in UAE to handle the case, as per local laws.
According to UAE-based legal experts, the courts in the UAE could reject an extradition request only in cases if the maximum prison sentence for the crime in the UAE is less than one year, if the penalty in the other country is financial only or if the judgement is made in the absence of the defendant.
One of the grounds being taken up by his defence team, according to Dubai-based sources, is “unsafe and unhygienic” condition of jails in India, a ground that has also been taken by businessman Vijay Mallya in front of the UK court to avoid extradition.
In the case of crimes where the penalty in the requesting country is a death sentence, the extradition can still be allowed if the UAE court considers that the death sentence is reasonable for the crime committed.
However, it can reject the request if the crime is of political nature, if it believes that the extradition was made on the basis of racist or political factors and reasons like if there was suspicion that the extradited individual may face any inhumane treatment or cruel punishment, which was not equivalent to the crime committed.