The Requesting State is not a spectator: a landmark Supreme Court ruling on Italian extradition procedure

With judgment no. 9195 of 9 February 2026, the Italian Supreme Court has clarified and expanded the procedural role of the Requesting State in extradition proceedings before Italian courts. The case originated from an extradition request by the People’s Republic of China which had been dismissed by the Brescia Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court quashed that decision because the Requesting State had been wrongly denied participation in the first-instance proceedings despite having explicitly and timely asked to take part in it. In doing so, the Court set out principles that seemingly reshape extradition practice and procedure in Italy.

The novelty of the judgment lies in three points.

First, the Requesting State’s intervention before the Court of Appeal is not subject to rigid time-limits. The Court emphasizes that Article 702 of the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure does not impose formal deadlines or a preclusive procedural bar. What matters is that the Requesting State expresses its intention to take part in the extradition proceedings. That intention may be communicated even after the public prosecutor has filed its opinion (requisitoria), and there is no bar simply because the request was not made at an earlier stage. But the Court goes even further by holding that the Requesting State may intervene even at the final hearing, as long as the judgment has not yet been delivered.

This marks a significant departure from the more restrictive approach previously adopted by the Supreme Court in judgment no. 14237 of 14 March 2017, which had identified a procedural time limit for intervention – namely, after the preliminary assessments at the first hearing and before the case is opened on the merits – by applying, by analogy, the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure governing other non-necessary parties in criminal proceedings (for a critical comment to that decision, we respectfully refer here). This is an approach that the Court now expressly declines to follow and intends to supersede.

Second, the judgment distinguishes between mere intervention and full procedural party status. The Requesting State may formalize its intention to attend and participate in the hearing even without or before appointing a counsel under Italian law. That declaration is enough to trigger its entitlement to procedural communications and summons, and to make its participation relevant for the Italian courts. But when the Requesting State appoints an Italian lawyer qualified to appear before the relevant judicial authority, its position changes from that of a simple institutional observer to that of a true procedural party. This distinction is crucial, because the Court ties the right to bring an autonomous appeal before the Supreme Court to formal intervention in the proceedings through counsel.

This is the third and perhaps most important finding: if the Requesting State has intervened before the Court of Appeal through a lawyer, regardless of when it has done so, it has standing to appeal to the Supreme Court in its own name. The Court reaches this conclusion through a systematic reading of Articles 127, 702, 704, 705 and 706 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In the Supreme Court’s view, once the foreign State has entered the case through defence counsel, it is entitled to receive notice of the first-instance decision and to challenge it. This gives the Requesting State a genuine and autonomous appellate voice, rather than leaving it dependent on the initiative of the public prosecutor, who may not – irrespective of the position taken in the first-instance proceedings – have the incentive to bring an appeal before the Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, the Court draws an important limit. A Requesting State that did not intervene through counsel before the Court of Appeal cannot file its own autonomous appeal before the Supreme Court, as this would create uncertainty about time-limits and the finality of decisions.

Yet the judgment is equally clear that the doors of the Supreme Court are not closed to a Requesting State that did not intervene before the Court of Appeal. If the cassation proceedings have already been instituted by another party – i.e. the requested person or the public prosecutor – the Requesting State may still intervene before the Supreme Court, even for the first time. In other words, although it cannot file its own late autonomous appeal against the first-instance decision, it may still join pending cassation proceedings and participate in them.

The relevance of this judgment goes beyond the single case, as it redefines the procedural architecture of passive extradition in Italy through these key findings: (i) the Requesting State may enter the proceedings late, even at the final hearing, so long as the first-instance judgment has not been adopted; (ii) if it intervenes through counsel in the first-instance proceedings, it becomes a full procedural actor with the right to file an autonomous appeal before the Supreme Court; and (iii) even absent intervention in the first-instance proceedings, it may still intervene in cassation proceedings initiated by others.

For practitioners, the decision marks a genuine shift from the previous restrictive approach of the Supreme Court. Counsel acting for Requesting States should make the intention to participate in extradition proceedings explicit as early as possible, but this judgment now provides strong authority that a later intervention is still valid up to the moment the first-instance judgment is delivered. At the same time, if the Requesting State wishes to preserve the possibility of filing its own cassation appeal, then intervention should be formalised through the appointment of Italian counsel before the Court of Appeal. Without that step, participation may still be possible later before the Supreme Court if another party appeals, but the State will not have its own autonomous right of challenge.

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