Administrative justice on Tuesday rejected a request from the lawyer of Sébastien Raoult, the French student accused of cybercrime and arrested in Morocco at the request of the United States.
Administrative justice on Tuesday rejected a request from the lawyer of Sébastien Raoult, a French student arrested in Morocco at the request of the United States which accuses him of cybercrime, intended to avoid his extradition across the Atlantic.
During a summary release hearing on Friday, his lawyer, Me Philippe Ohayon, had asked the Paris administrative court to order the Keeper of the Seals Eric Dupond-Moretti to send the documents of a request for mutual criminal assistance executed by France and formulated by the American authorities in July 2020, then renewed until May 16, 2022, concerning the “ShinyHunters”, a group of hackers.
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The lawyer argued in particular that these documents were likely to demonstrate that the French courts were competent to prosecute Sébastien Raoult, suspected by the FBI of being part of this group of hackers, and therefore allow his extradition to France rather than the UNITED STATES.
The 21-year-old was arrested on May 31 in Morocco as he was about to board a plane to return to France and has since been imprisoned near Rabat.
In its decision on Tuesday, of which AFP was aware, the administrative court considered that the administrative judge was “not competent to order the communication of these acts”.
“Americans do what they want in France, impose their rules of rights on us, despite our own laws” Paul Raoult, Sébastien’s father
“Since the minister claimed to be bound by a kind of confidentiality clause, we are going to ask the minister to ask, or even demand from the Americans, the lifting of this clause”, reacted Me Ohayon to AFP. “If he doesn’t, that means something is wrong.”
“In this final episode of the Sébastien Raoult affair, we observe that everyone passes the buck, no one is competent and everything is confidential. From this observation, the Americans do what they want in France , impose their rules of rights on us, despite our own laws”, lamented in a press release Paul Raoult, the father of Sébastien.
The American authorities are calling for the extradition of the student from Epinal for his alleged involvement in a cybercrime case targeting companies, American in particular including Microsoft.
The Moroccan justice gave in July a favorable opinion to this extradition, considering that the alleged offenses had “been committed by a Frenchman on the American territory via the unauthorized connection to the computers of companies domiciled on the American territory”.
However, the extradition itself can only be decided by the Moroccan political power.