Why Italy refused extradition of former Brazilian deputy Carla Zambelli: a legal analysis

With judgment no. 21634 of 22 May 2026, published on 11 June 2026, the Italian Court of Cassation refused Brazil’s (first) request for extradition against Carla Zambelli.

Zambelli is a former Brazilian federal deputy for São Paulo, close to former President Jair Bolsonaro, and also an Italian citizen by descent. Brazil requested her extradition to enforce a ten-year prison sentence for hacking and ideological falsehood imposed by the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court.

The decision overturned a previous judgment of the Rome Court of Appeal from March 2026, which had authorised her extradition to Brazil. The Court of Appeal had granted surrender subject to a number of conditions, all of which had formed part of assurances from Brazil: detention in a specific women’s prison in the Federal District, access by Italian diplomatic and consular authorities, and periodic information on her health and detention conditions.

The Court of Cassation took a different view. It annulled that decision without remand, holding that her conviction was fundamentally flawed by a serious breach of the principle of impartiality.

The charges and the conviction in Brazil

The case concerned the alleged hacking of the electronic system of Brazil’s National Council of Justice (the CNJ).

According to the accusation, under Zambelli’s direction, Brazilian hacker Walter Delgatti breached the security systems of CNJ between 2022 and 2023. The hacker allegedly tampered with official documents – such as certificates, release orders, banking secrecy authorizations and arrest warrants, including a fake arrest warrant against Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes – in what prosecutors described as a deliberate attack on the justice system itself.

The Brazilian Supreme Federal Court – with Justice Alexandre de Moraes acting as rapporteur – unanimously convicted Zambelli on both charges and sentenced her to ten years’ imprisonment.

How the case reached Italy

The road to Italy was somewhat rocambolesque.

After her conviction in Brazil, Zambelli left the country. According to press reports, she first crossed into Argentina, then travelled to the United States, and only later reached Italy. In the meantime, she publicly presented herself as a political exile and relied heavily on the fact that she also had Italian citizenship.

That, in her view, changed everything. She reportedly suggested that, with an Italian passport, even an Interpol alert would not force her back to Brazil. Italy, she seemed to believe, would be a safe place to wait out the Brazilian proceedings.

It did not quite go that way. Not on those grounds, at least.

Brazil issued an arrest warrant. An Interpol alert followed. Italian authorities eventually arrested her in Rome, after her alleged address was reported to the police by Italian MP Angelo Bonelli. The episode added an almost surreal layer to an already politically charged case.

The first round, as mentioned, was favourable to Brazil: the Rome Court of Appeal granted her extradition.

Then the Court of Cassation intervened. It did not simply ask the Court of Appeal to reconsider the case, as often happens, but it overturned the decision without remand and held that extradition could not be granted.

The reason was not Zambelli’s nationality, nor the political nature of the case as such. Rather, the Supreme Court held that Italy could not surrender her to serve a sentence if the conviction to be enforced had been issued in proceedings affected by a serious doubt as to the impartiality of the judge.

Who is Alexandre de Moraes and why does he matter?

The problem, for the Italian Court, was the role played by Alexandre de Moraes.

Moraes was not just mentioned in the fake arrest warrant hacked into the NCJ’s database. Despite potentially being a victim of Zambelli’s conduct, he also sat on the panel that convicted her: he was the reporting judge, he took part in deciding the objection concerning his own incompatibility, he then issued the arrest warrant and was involved in the extradition request.

That combination of roles was the decisive point.

The Court did not say that Moraes was personally biased. It said something different: even if a judge believes he is impartial, the structure of the proceedings must also appear impartial from the outside. Here, that appearance of impartiality was missing.

For the Court of Cassation, the issue had not been answered in a concrete way at the domestic level. It was not enough to say that Brazilian law provides remedies in theory, or that the decision was taken by a collegiate court. What mattered was whether Zambelli’s objection had been assessed by a genuinely separate and neutral authority. The Court found that this had not been shown.

It therefore annulled the decision of the Rome Court of Appeal and ordered Zambelli’s release unless she was detained for other reasons. She was consequently released from prison.

The judgment does not acquit Zambelli, nor does it say that Brazil is generally unable to guarantee fair trials. It says that, in this specific case, extradition could not be granted because the conviction to be enforced was affected by a serious doubt about judicial impartiality.

What happens next: the second extradition request

The judgment should not be read as the end of Zambelli’s extradition proceedings in Italy.

It is important to clarify that this Cassation judgment concerned only the extradition request based on the CNJ hacking conviction.

Italian courts are currently reviewing a second request for extradition, separate from the hacking case, concerning another conviction arising from the 2022 electoral campaign, when Zambelli was accused of pursuing a man in São Paulo while armed. She was eventually sentenced to three years and five months imprisonment on those charges.

In that second case, too, the Rome Court of Appeal reportedly gave a decision favourable to extradition on 16 April 2026, which is currently pending for review before the Supreme Court.

In fact, the Supreme Court judgment on the first request suggests that Zambelli’s defence had asked for the two proceedings to be examined together, but that request was rejected.

The second extradition request, therefore, remains pending before the Court of Cassation. As mentioned, that proceeding concerns a different conviction and does not necessarily raise the same fair-trial issue as the previous one. Its outcome may therefore turn on different questions, particularly whether the assurances provided by Brazil are sufficiently specific, reliable and verifiable, especially as regards the prison where Zambelli would be detained, her health conditions, consular access and the possibility of monitoring her detention.

In this respect, it is worth noting that the Italian Court of Cassation has recently taken a less categorical approach to detention conditions in Brazil (Supreme Court, Division VI, 3 June 2026, no. 20942).

The situation of Brazilian prisons is no longer treated, in itself, as a matter of common knowledge automatically requiring refusal of extradition. The defence must point to specific, current and reliable material showing a real risk of treatment contrary to fundamental rights. Only then will the Court of Appeal be required to seek supplementary information from Brazil.

And even where such information is requested, it cannot be excluded a priori that assurances provided by Brazil may be considered sufficient, provided they are specific, reliable and capable of addressing the risk identified in the individual case.

In other words, the first request failed because of a defect in the conviction itself. The second may depend much more on whether Brazil’s diplomatic assurances are enough to exclude a real risk linked to prison conditions.