Administrative justice rejected on Tuesday August 30 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, asked the Paris administrative court to order the Keeper of the Seals Éric 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.
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.
Cybercrime case
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 “notnot competent to order the communication of these documents“. “Since the minister maintained that he was bound by a sort of confidentiality clause, we are going to ask the minister to ask, or even demand, that the Americans lift 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 is passing 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 law on us, despite our own laws.“, lamented in a press release Paul Raoult, the father of Sébastien.
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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 on this extradition, considering that the alleged offenses had “was committed by a French person on American territory via the unauthorized connection to the computers of companies domiciled on American territory“. However, the extradition itself can only be decided by the Moroccan political power.
SEE ALSO – Sébastien Raoult imprisoned in Morocco: his lawyer wishes to be able to access the file
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