A Polish court of appeals on Thursday refused to extradite to Lithuania the second Polish citizen suspected of assaulting Russian opposition activist Leonid Volkov in Vilnius.
“A ruling was issued yesterday, and the court of appeal decided to refuse to hand over the suspect to the Lithuanian authorities,” Norbert Wolinsky, a spokesman for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Warsaw, told BNS on Friday.
On June 7, the Reuters news agency reported that a Polish court had decided not to extradite the first suspect in the attack on Volkov. The court stated at the time that the Pole could not be extradited to Lithuania because Polish prosecutors were conducting a similar process.
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Two Polish nationals suspected of attacking Volkov in Vilnius were arrested in response to the European arrest warrant in Warsaw on April 3.
In the same month, the city’s regional court decided to extradite the suspects to Lithuania on the condition that, if sentenced to prison, they would serve their time in Poland.
However, the two men later appealed against the European Arrest Warrant.
Volkov, a close ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison, was attacked in his car outside his home in the Lithuanian capital late on March 12. The attacker broke the car’s window, sprayed tear gas, and started hitting Volkov with a meat mallet, breaking his arm and causing leg injuries.
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