LUXEMBOURG (CN) — A magistrate of the EU’s highest court said Thursday that Slovakia can issue an arrest warrant for two men thought to be involved in a 25-year-old kidnapping, despite being pardoned.
Advocate General Juliane Kokott of the Court of Justice of the European Union advised that arrest warrants can be issued for two men wanted for the 1995 kidnapping of then-president Michal Kováč’s son. The pair had been pardoned in a backroom political deal which was later revoked.
EU law “does not preclude the issuance of a European arrest warrant ... where the criminal proceedings have been discontinued on account of an amnesty without an examination of the criminal responsibility of the persons concerned, but where the decision to discontinue ceased to have effect when the amnesty was revoked,” the German magistrate wrote in a 12-page advisory opinion.
The matter was referred to the Luxembourg-based court by District Court, Bratislava III, Okresný súd Bratislava III, who was unsure whether arresting the country’s former secret service chief Ivan Lexa and another unnamed man would violate the principle of double jeopardy.
The case dates back a quarter of a century, when Michal Kováč Jr. was stopped just outside of the country’s capital Bratislava by a group of men who made him to drink a bottle of whiskey, forced him into the trunk of a car and drove him to Austria. The 34-year-old was wanted for financial fraud in Germany and, when he was discovered by Austrian police, arrested. However, an Austrian court ultimately sent him home after finding his kidnapping wasn’t a legal extradition.
Slovak police connected the incident to the Slovak spy agency SIS, which was closely aligned with the country’s prime minister, and a political rival of the senior Kováč, Vladimír Mečiar. Before an indictment could be brought, Mečiar issued a pardon, killing the investigation.
In 2017, Slovakia’s parliament passed a law allowing the body to revoke pardons, which they did for Lexa and 12 others suspected of involvement in the crime.
In the case before the European high court, Lexa and his unnamed co-defendant argued the pardon meant they couldn’t be prosecuted, regardless of whether it was revoked. Kokott found the amnesty in this case was granted “without an examination of the criminal responsibility of the persons concerned” and therefore it was possible for the Slovakian authorities to move forward with the arrest warrant.
The opinions of the court’s magistrates are nonbinding but final decisions follow their legal reasoning in about 80% of cases.
Lexa previously won a case before the European Court of Human Rights for unlawful detention after he was deported to Slovakia in 2002 after being on the run for several years, and held in custody without being charged with a crime.
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