The detention of Russian citizen Alexander Franchetti at the Prague airport on a warrant from Ukraine is a "dangerous precedent," that creates the impression that Russian citizens cannot feel safe when in European countries, Jan Carnogursky, former Slovak Prime Minister and the head of the Friends of Crimea international association, told Sputnik
PRAGUE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st September, 2021) The detention of Russian citizen Alexander Franchetti at the Prague airport on a warrant from Ukraine is a "dangerous precedent," that creates the impression that Russian citizens cannot feel safe when in European countries, Jan Carnogursky, former Slovak Prime Minister and the head of the Friends of Crimea international association, told Sputnik.
Franchetti was detained on September 12 on a warrant issued by Ukraine, where he is wanted over his alleged role in the 2014 Crimea reunification with Russia. Moscow has called on Prague to prevent "the politicization" of the case and release the Russian citizen.
"I am closely following the development of the situation with Franchetti and I believe that his detention is a dangerous precedent that can lead to the fact that every Russian citizen entering the territory of the EU member states, will not feel safe there, because the independence of justice in these countries is not ensured," Carnogursky said.
Carnogursky expressed concerns that similar incidents can happen to any Russians, even those who had nothing to do with Crimea's referendum.
"There may be such 'witnesses' who will say that this or that person was in the Crimea at some point and took part in God knows what," he suggested.
Even though the actions of the Czech justice authorities towards Franchetti have not formally contradicted the law, the issue of their objectivity is "another question," which Carnogursky refused to discuss further.
"If the Czech Republic had extradited Franchetti to Ukraine, first of all, it would have violated the international law on Interpol, which obliges this organization to deal only with criminal, not political cases. And the Franchetti case is purely political since the Ukrainian authorities are challenging the right of Crimean residents to decide on the issue of the peninsula's secession from Ukraine and joining Russia in their referendum," the Slovak politician explained.
If the Russian national was extradited to Kiev by Prague, the latter would violate the rights of Franchetti himself, given the judicial proceedings against him in Ukraine are unlikely to be objective, Carnogursky added.
However, lately, the Czech Republic has made numerous "serious miscalculations" in its policies, so the issue of Franchetti's extradition to Ukraine remains likely, the Slovak official concluded.
Crimea rejoined Russia in March 2014, when the nearly whole population of the peninsula participating in a regional referendum voted for the reunification. Kiev and Western states refused to recognize the results of the vote, imposing economic and political sanctions on Moscow.
