Today, 19 August, the Defense Team of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab has lodged two complaints, for the commencement of disciplinary proceedings, to the Superior Council of the Magistracy against, three judges of the Barlavento Court of Appeal, and to the Superior Council of the Public Prosecution Office against Luís José Tavares Landim, Prosecutor General of Cabo Verde.

The pair of complaints come further to the criminal complaints filed on 9 August against Luís José Tavares Landim, Prosecutor General of Cabo Verde, and police inspectors of the Judiciary Police of Sal. These procedures represent attempts by Alex Saab to obtain the justice which has been denied him for more than 430 days as a result of deliberate and organized police and prosecutorial obstruction.

The aforesaid Judges made many procedural errors that violated Mr. Saab’s basic human rights and that consequently lead to the approval of his extradition to the United States by their Court. In addition, the Judges repeatedly ignored and disregarded numerous requests for appropriate medical care for Mr. Saab.

As for the Prosecutor General, the complaint notes that he willfully ignored the criminal complaints of Mr. Saab and made many omissions in his submissions in support of Mr. Saab's extradition to the U.S.

Mr Saab’s complaints can be summarized as follows:

1- In the absence of an arrest warrant, the Judges of the Barlavento Court simply should not have validated the arrest of Mr. Saab.

2- The Judges also supported Mr. Saab’s extradition by stating that the local laws requirements are met. However, considering the absence of the arrest warrant it is in clear violation of the Law on Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters.

3- The indictment issued in the United States charges Mr Saab with 8 offences, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. If Mr Saab were to be found guilty of all eight offences he would be faced with a sentence of 160 years. This would amount to a whole-of-life sentence, which under the Cape Verdean constitution is considered a death sentence and therefore extradition is specifically prohibited under such circumstances. The Barlavento judges negligently did not examine the issue of the assurance, provided by the U.S. by way of a diplomatic note, that Mr. Saab would not be sentenced to 160 years of imprisonment.

U.S. law requires that the “Rule of Specialty”, to be binding on the United States, has to be explicitly featured in the relevant bilateral extradition treaty; no such treaty exists between the United States and Cabo Verde (To the extent that the United States is allegedly relying on the United Nations Convention on Transnational Crime (UNCTOC) as being the treaty-basis for this extradition, it does not work, since the extradition provisions of the UNCTOC do not feature the specialty clause. However, what is even more rhetorically compelling, being a factual and not a legal argument, is that the United States has notified the United Nations (September 2003) that it will not apply the UNCTOC’s extradition provision.  Hence, it is disingenuous at best and a flat out lie at worst, for anybody to pretend that UNCTOC can be the basis for the imposition of the Rule of Specialty.

Cape Verdeans Against US Pressure to Extradite Diplomat Alex Saab

The protracted legal battle in Cape Verde's courts over the controversial extradition of diplomat Alex Saab to the United States has made most Cape Verdeans question the credibility of their own judiciary and even the independence of their own government. The domestic fall-out over the Saab case may also have cost the government significant political support ahead of the October presidential elections, even though its governing record on other matters has been relatively well-supported. Read on. 

4- The time of provisional detention in jail was exceeded by around 100 days, and this fact was also neglected by the Judges.

5- The Judges did not provide Mr. Saab with even a single day in court to be able to tell his own story to defend himself in his own words. This violates the constitutional norms contained in articles 32(4), 35(6), (7) and (9), 211(4) of the Constitution of Cabo Verde and article 14(3)(d) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 10 and 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

6- Mr. Saab’s Defense Team filed several criminal complaints on torture, perjury, concealment of evidence to the Prosecutor General against the members of the Judicial Police in Sal in 2020. Several months later, these complaints have not been investigated but shockingly they have been neither answered nor acknowledged.

7- Despite the absence of the arrest warrant in the name of Mr. Saab, the Prosecutor General has repeatedly supported the extradition of Mr. Saab before the relevant courts and even submitted an  opinion in support of Mr. Saab’s extradition to the Dr. Janine Tatiana Santos Lélis, former Minister of Justice of Cape Verde (currently - Minister of State, National Defense and Minister for Territorial Cohesion) who also despite this grievous error approved extradition.

8- Mr Saab was arrested on 12 June 2020. Only on 28 June 2021, more than a year later, has the Prosecutor General presented an arrest warrant actually in the name of Mr. Saab to the Constitutional Court. He characterized this as “a trivialerror” which in his view had caused “no harm.”

All these substantial procedural omissions, and deontological violations have been repeated on a regular basis, causing irreparable damage to Mr. Saab's health and rights. In a state that positions itself as a bastion of the rule of law in Africa, such omissions on the part of officials are unacceptable and do a disservice to the reputation of the entire country.