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In 2023 and 2024, the Spanish government authorized nine extraditions to continue through judicial channels, and at least one person has already been handed over to Chinese authorities. On October 29, 2024, after almost two years in prison, this 41-year-old man, wanted for fraud, was released from Madrid’s Soto del Real prison to be extradited to the People’s Republic of China. “I have no information about his situation or treatment in China, except that he is awaiting trial,” confirms the lawyer who defended him during the process, Carlos Aguirre de Cárcer.

The lack of guarantees that extradited individuals would receive humane and fair treatment in China was the reason why the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) prohibited Poland from extraditing Taiwanese Hung Tao Liu in a landmark judgment, Liu v. Poland. Reports by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International found, in the eyes of the seven judges, “the use of torture and ill-treatment” in Chinese prisons and detention centers “to such an extent that it may amount to a situation of generalized violence.”

The lack of guarantees that extradited individuals would receive humane and fair treatment in China was the reason why the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) prohibited Poland from extraditing Taiwanese Hung Tao Liu in a landmark judgment, Liu v. Poland. Reports by the United Nations and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International found, in the eyes of the seven judges, “the use of torture and ill-treatment” in Chinese prisons and detention centers “to such an extent that it may amount to a situation of generalized violence.”

Consequently, the ECHR exempted Liu from having to prove a specific personal risk, given that the extradition request indicated that, once in China, he would be placed in a detention center, which was “sufficient” to deny the extradition. “An individual requesting protection must be guaranteed the benefit of the doubt,” reads the judgment of October 6, 2022.

Since the ruling became final in January 2023, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands and Norway have not handed over any person wanted by the Chinese authorities, as confirmed to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) by various authorities in these countries within the framework of China Targets, an investigation coordinated by the ICIJ, in which EL PAÍS participate.

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Luis Chabaneix, founder and director of a Madrid-based firm specializing in extraditions that has managed to stop two extraditions to China in extremis in recent months, believes that, despite the extradition treaty and the alignment of interests that may exist between governments — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has traveled to China three times on official visits — “deep down, judges are almost ashamed to send someone there” and agree to suspend them for a variety of reasons.

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Sometimes, however, the reasons run much deeper. Chabaneix’s legal firm defended a Chinese businessman detained in Marbella and wanted by Beijing for an alleged corporate crime. The case met all the formal requirements, but Chabaneix claimed that the accusation had been fabricated using a partner’s statement obtained under torture.

The partner, who currently lives in the United States, testified in writing before the Spanish High Court that he spent 14 months imprisoned in the Beijing Municipal Security Bureau “sleeping on the floor, with the lights permanently on, frequently subjected to physical punishment, coercion, and insinuation to fabricate false evidence against himself and the defendant," according to the ruling by the Third Section of the Criminal Chamber of the High Court.

All of this occurred during the same time that the Spanish government was demanding China guarantee in writing that it would respect the human rights of the English teacher it was seeking to extradite.

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Meanwhile, a new appeal originating in Spain and headed to Strasbourg is underway. In addition to the man extradited from the Soto del Real prison in October, the High Court had authorized at least a second extradition, but an appeal has managed to suspend it, for the time being. The extraditable man, another Chinese businessman being pursued by Beijing, is an asylum seeker with a son who holds Spanish nationality and the court ruled that the petition must wait for his request to be resolved, according to his lawyer, Inmaculada Cruz Guillén.

The case will reach Strasbourg via Rome, says Cruz Guillén. An Italian law firm has appealed the case to the ECHR from the Italian capital, where the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified by Spain in 1979, was signed in 1950.