Prague, June 1 (CTK) – Russian Yevgeniy Nikulin, who is facing hacking charges, will lodge a complaint against the Czech court decision that his extradition to Russia is admissible, Nikulin’s defence counsel Martin Sadilek told journalists on Thursday.
Sadilek said the previous decisions had been affected by a procedural error.
On Tuesday, Nikulin complained about that part of a court ruling that allowed his extradition to the USA.
Now the High Court in Prague will deal with his case.
The United States seeks Nikulin’s extradition on suspicion of having attacked the Linkedin social network and the servers of the Dropbox and Formspring companies for which he faces up to 30 years in prison and a one-million-dollar fine. The Czech police in cooperation with the U.S. FBI detained Nikulin in a Prague hotel last October. He was taken into custody.
According to the U.S. investigators, Nikulin used the Internet to hack computers of the Linkedin professional network on March 3-4, 2012 and he gained passwords of their users with the aim to either sell the stolen data or use them for an unauthorised access to further computers and accounts.
Russia issued a warrant for Nikulin’s arrest on suspicion of an Internet theft of finances amounting $3,450.
Nikulin, 29, prefers being extradited to Russia where he is facing a lower punishment.
Nikulin denies the allegation that he is a hacker, arguing that it is only based on the claims of FBI agents.
On Tuesday, the Prague Municipal Court ruled that Nikulin’s extradition is admissible both to the USA and Russia.
“The reason is similar to the complaint about the admissibility of his extradition to the USA. The whole trial has been burdened with a procedural error. Nikulin was not delivered the translation of the documents from the Municipal State Attorney’s Office in Prague and he feels damaged,” Sadilek said.
The final decision on whether and where to extradite Nikulin is to be made by the justice minister.
