Norway refuses surrender to Greece of human rights activist Tommy Olsen

With a judgment of 15 May 2026, the Hålogaland Court of Appeal refused the surrender of Tommy Olsen, founder of Aegean Boat Report, to Greece (the full text, with multilingual translation, is published on Extradition Hub at this link).

Although Norway is not an EU Member State, the case arose under the surrender mechanism established by the Agreement of 28 June 2006 between the European Union, Iceland and Norway, a system closely modelled on the European arrest warrant. The case is therefore of wider interest for judicial cooperation in criminal matters in Europe.

Greece did not formally seek Olsen’s surrender for his reporting, advocacy or criticism of migration practices. The arrest warrant sought his surrender for participation in a criminal organisation, facilitation of unauthorised entry and facilitation of unauthorised residence.

The importance of the judgment lies precisely in the fact that the Norwegian Court looked beyond the legal labelsused in the warrant and examined the factual basis of the accusations. In doing so, it found that the conduct attributed to Olsen substantially overlapped with his human rights activities connected to his work with Aegean Boat Report: receiving information, photographs and videos from migrants, documenting arrivals, assisting migrants in asylum procedures, transmitting information to authorities, and criticising pushbacks by Greek authorities.

The Court refused surrender on two grounds. First, it held that the requirement of double criminality was not satisfied. Secondly, and more importantly, it found that surrender would expose Olsen to a real risk of violation of his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR (further press coverage of the judgment may be found here, here and here).

No dual criminality

The Greek arrest warrant was based on three accusations: participation in a criminal organisation, facilitation of unauthorised entry, and facilitation of unauthorised residence.

A preliminary point is worth clarifying.

Under the EAW model, and under the parallel EU–Iceland–Norway surrender mechanism, participation in a criminal organisation and facilitation of unauthorised entry or residence are listed offences for which dual criminality is normally not verified, provided the relevant conditions are met (see, respectively, Article 2 of FD 2002/584/JHA and Article 3 of the EU-Norway-Iceland Agreement). Here, however, the Norwegian Court found that the alleged conduct had been carried out, at least in part, from Norway, since Olsen was in Norway and the acts attributed to him consisted largely of electronic communications.

That triggered the territoriality safeguard in Article 5(1)(g) of the EU-Iceland-Norway Agreement, as implemented in Norwegian law: where the offence is regarded as committed wholly or partly in Norway, surrender may be refused if the conduct is not punishable there. This is why the Court assessed whether Olsen’s alleged conduct would be criminal under Norwegian law.

It concluded that it would not.

As to the first charge, participation in a criminal organisation, the Court did not stop at the abstract label. It examined the conduct attributed to Olsen: communicating through WhatsApp Business, receiving information, photographs, videos and personal details from migrants or persons assisting them, and using that information in connection with asylum procedures. The Court found that receiving information from persons seeking protection, assisting with the initiation of asylum procedures, and transmitting information to competent authorities could not, in itself, constitute criminal conduct. The warrant did not describe a concrete act by which Olsen had helped migrants evade controls. On the contrary, the alleged assistance consisted largely in bringing individuals into contact with public authorities through the asylum system.

The same reasoning applied to the second charge, facilitation of unlawful entry. The Court distinguished between criminal assistance in crossing a border unlawfully and conduct consisting in receiving information and assisting access to asylum procedures. The factual description did not show that Olsen had influenced the decision to travel, organised the crossing, determined the place or manner of entry, or provided an indispensable contribution to a smuggling operation.

As to the third charge, facilitation of unlawful residence, the Court emphasised that asylum seekers are entitled to remain while their applications are pending. The warrant did not allege that the persons concerned remained in Greece after a final rejection of their asylum claims. Assistance connected with asylum procedures could not therefore be reframed as assistance with unlawful stay.

This finding is consistent with Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which protects refugees from being penalised on account of irregular entry or presence.

The human-rights core of the judgment

The most innovative part of the decision is the Court’s findings on Article 10 ECHR.

It is well-known that Article 10 protects the right to express opinions, as well as the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority.

Similarly to the EAW FD, the EU-Iceland-Norway Agreement expressly provides that it does not modify the obligation to respect fundamental rights as enshrined in the ECHR (Article 1(3) of the Agreement). It also preserves the possibility of refusal where there are objective reasons to believe that the arrest warrant has been issued to prosecute or punish a person on prohibited grounds, including political opinions, or where the person’s position may be prejudiced for such reasons (Article 1(4) of the Agreement).

This is where the Norwegian Court’s reasoning becomes especially interesting. Olsen was not charged with speech offences. He was charged with organised crime and migration-related facilitation offences.

Yet the Court considered that the factual basis of those charges was deeply connected to his work with Aegean Boat Report. It examined the broader context and kept into account Olsen’s role in documenting arrivals and alleged pushbacks, the reports concerning the treatment of migrants in Greece, the criticism expressed by international bodies and NGOs regarding pressure on migration-rights defenders, and the history of previous investigations or proceedings against him.

In that context, the Court also took into account the public position of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, who had expressed concern about the proceedings against Olsen and their possible chilling effect on migration-related human-rights work (see her statement of 25 March 2026 here).

On these grounds, the Court found concrete reasons to believe that the criminal proceedings were connected to activities and conduct protected by Article 10 ECHR.

That is the central point of the judgment. Most fundamental-rights litigation in EAW and extradition cases concerns Article 3, especially detention conditions, or, occasionally, Article 6, particularly fair-trial guarantees, when there is a risk of flagrant denial of justice (see, for example, ECtHR, Mamatkulov and Askarov v. Turkey [GC], 4 February 2005, § 90). Article 10 plays a much smaller role.

The Olsen decision is therefore noteworthy, because freedom of expression may become directly relevant as a potential bar to surrender where the person sought is a journalist, activist, NGO worker or human-rights defender, and where the prosecution appears linked to public-interest reporting or advocacy.

Why the case matters

The Olsen judgment is important for three reasons.

First, it is a reminder that surrender proceedings are not mechanical and that mutual trust is not blind, especially where criminal-law labels risk transforming protected activity into criminality.

Secondly, it clarifies the limits of the abolition of double criminality. Under Article 2(2) of the EAW Framework Decision, and under the corresponding mechanism in the EU-Iceland-Norway Agreement, executing courts normally do not verify double criminality for listed offences such as participation in a criminal organisation or facilitation of unauthorised entry and residence. But that rule does not prevent all scrutiny of the warrant’s factual basis, nor does it override specific safeguards preserved by the applicable surrender regime, such as territoriality-based refusal grounds.

Thirdly, and most importantly,the judgment brings Article 10 ECHR into the heart of surrender law. It shows that an arrest warrant may raise a freedom-of-expression problem even where the charges are formally framed as ordinary criminal offences. What matters is whether the prosecution substantially risks targeting activities such as documenting abuses, communicating information of public interest, assisting access to legal procedures, and criticising State conduct.