Italy’s top court blocked the extradition to Germany of a Ukrainian man arrested over the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe, his lawyer said.
The Court of Cassation in Rome yesterday rejected the ruling of an appeals court, instead sending back the case to a new panel for review.
The man, identified only as Serhii K under German privacy laws, according to Reuters, was arrested in August near the Italian town of Rimini on a European warrant over the explosions that crippled the pipelines in the Baltic Sea supplying Russian gas to Germany.
AFP named him as Serhii Kuznietsov. He has denied participating in a cell that allegedly placed explosives on the underwater pipelines in September 2022.
Four leaks were later found in three of the four pipeline strands. Nord Stream 1 had been supplying gas to Germany, while Nord Stream 2 had never gone into service following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, German media outlet DW reported.
A second Ukrainian suspect — a 46-year-old trained diver — remains in custody in Poland, where authorities are still considering Germany’s request for extradition.
The first defendant, who claims to have been a member of the Ukrainian armed forces and in Ukraine at the time of the incident, faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty in Germany, according to the appeals court in the northern Italian city of Bologna, whose extradition ruling was rejected.
Kuznietsov’s lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, said in a statement yesterday that prosecutors had supported one of the elements in his appeal, “namely the incorrect legal classification of the facts underlying the European Arrest Warrant”, AFP reported.
“The Supreme Court accepted this reasoning and quashed the decision with remand. The written reasoning will follow in the coming weeks,” he said.
The pipelines that had shipped Russian gas to Europe for years were damaged by huge blasts just months after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Western powers that back Kyiv initially blamed Russia, which in turn accused them.
German investigations have identified a Ukrainian cell of five men and one woman as the perpetrators of the blasts.
At the time of his arrest, German prosecutors said Kuznietsov had used forged identity documents to charter a yacht, which departed from the German city of Rostock to carry out the attacks.
Kuznietsov is being held in a high-security prison in northern Italy.
His defence team had argued before the appeals court that – even had he been involved – his military service would give him “functional immunity” under international law.
They also argued the pipelines could be seen as a legitimate military target during a war, so the attack on them was not sabotage.
The appeals court, though, said the German arrest warrant did not mention his military role.
Canestrini had argued that his client was denied a fair trial, due to not being able to attend hearings, being denied full access to the German case file, as well as being given a “wholly inadequate” translator.
Nord Stream had long been contentious for enabling Russian gas to bypass eastern European transit routes and leaving Germany overly reliant on cheap energy from Moscow.
Russia profited from being Germany’s top natural gas supplier, but the EU has sanctioned and massively cut its imports of Russian energy amid Moscow’s offensive on Ukraine.
None of the pipelines hit were in operation at the time of the blast.
The extension pipeline – Nord Stream 2 – was only completed shortly before Russia sent troops into Ukraine and never entered service.
