Over the past five years, the Armenian Ministry of Justice has rejected 452 requests from foreign countries to extradite people.

Twenty-three countries have applied to Armenia with extradition requests. The top three “rejected” countries are Russia (305 requests), Iran (48 requests), and Georgia (20 requests).

On March 12, 2025, during the process of obtaining Armenian citizenship, thirty-year-old Nikolay Zonov, accused of evading military service in Russia, was arrested in Yerevan.

Nikolay Zonov’s wife, Arevik Zonova, had posted on social media that she feared that her husband would be prosecuted and retaliated against because he did not support Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The family left Russia in September 2023, when active mobilization began in the country. Shortly after, Armenia’s Prosecutor’s Office announced that Nikolay Zonov had been released. That is, the extradition process of a Russian citizen has not begun.

This is one of the examples when Armenia refused to extradite a wanted person to Russia. Russia is doing the same. During 2020-2024, Russia rejected twenty-four extradition requests made by Armenia. According to the Armenian Ministry of Justice (MoJ), these were for individuals accused of fraud, murder or attempted murder, theft, computer network penetration, smuggling, drug trafficking, and traffic violations.

The MoJ told Hetq that the non-implementation of extraditions was due to multilateral and bilateral treaties between Armenia and foreign countries, as well as several grounds for refusing extradition established by domestic legislation. For example, the threat to the life and health of a person in the event of extradition, the expiration of the statute of limitations established by domestic legislation for imposing a sentence or criminal liability imposed by a court verdict, citizenship, termination of the search, the fact that the act was not a criminally punishable act, granting asylum, qualifying the act as a military, political, or financial crime, and the initiation of a criminal case based on the victim’s complaint. the absence of extradition petitions, etc.

The issue of extraditing people who have committed a crime in the territories of the Republic of Armenia and a foreign state, who are under investigation and are in the territory of the Republic of Armenia is regulated by several bilateral and multilateral treaties.

The 1957 European Convention on Extradition, the 1993 Minsk Convention on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Matters, and the 2002 Chisinau Convention on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Matters are multilateral international documents. In addition, Armenia has bilateral treaties with 10 states: the UAE, Bulgaria, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Georgia, China, Romania, Kuwait, and Ukraine.

It should be noted that the extradition sector at the domestic level is regulated by the provisions of the Law "On Legal Assistance in Criminal Proceedings" adopted in November 2024, according to which the decision to authorize or refuse extradition of a person located in the territory of Armenia is made by the Minister of Justice, if the case is in court proceedings, as well as in the case when there is a verdict regarding the given person. And the decisions to authorize or refuse extradition are made by the Prosecutor General if the case is in pre-trial proceedings.

Decisions of the relevant authority of the Republic of Armenia to authorize or refuse extradition are subject to judicial review.

From 2020 until January 31, 2025, Armenia extradited twenty-three male, and two female “wanted” persons, of whom two were transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany, eight to Russia, two to France, five to Georgia, four to Turkey, and one each to Belgium, Greece, Korea, and Iceland.

The acts committed by these persons include intentional harm to health, large-scale and especially large-scale robbery, fraud, murder, creating an organization for the purpose of committing crimes, illegal production and sale of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or their analogues, illegal crossing of the state border, money laundering of particularly large amounts by an organized criminal group, pimping, rape, etc.

During the same period, eleven male “wanted” individuals were extradited to Armenia – eight from Russia, two from Georgia, and one from Germany.

The MoJ reports that decisions to refuse extradition of “wanted” persons by the Republic of Armenia and foreign states and case materials are, as a rule, archived, therefore it is not possible to provide information on their alleged acts.

According to Armenian Ministry of Internal Affairs data, over the past five years, 2020-2024, 135 persons were declared internationally wanted through Interpol at the initiative of the law enforcement agencies of Armenia, thirty-four of whom were foreign citizens. As of March 10, 2025, three persons are “wanted”. The highest figure was in 2020 – sixty-one.

Of those declared “wanted” at the initiative of the Republic of Armenia, 140 were arrested over the past five years, fifty-four of whom were extradited to Armenia. It should be noted that the number of those arrested exceeds the number of those wanted, as some of the arrested were wanted before the specified period.

At the initiative of Interpol member states and through that organization, 170 internationally wanted persons were arrested in the territory of Armenia in 2020-2025. As of March 10, 2023, the highest figure was 55. Twenty-one were extradited.

A citizen of the Republic of Armenia shall not be extradited to a foreign state, unless otherwise provided for by an international treaty ratified by the Republic of Armenia. Extradition shall be conducted to conduct criminal prosecution or trial in the territory of a foreign state, or to ensure the execution of a judgment.

Since decisions on granting or refusing extradition in cases under pre-trial proceedings are made by the Prosecutor General, Hetq contacted the Prosecutor General’s Office with a request to receive the same information. However, they informed us that we can find out the statistical data on extraditions in the reports on the activities of the Prosecutor’s Office.

Our questions were clear, and there wasn’t complete information in the reports on the activities of the Prosecutor’s Office Instead of providing the requested information, the Prosecutor’s Office replied that “the Prosecutor’s Office does not keep records of other data.”

For example, the Prosecutor’s Office’s 2023 report states that in 2023   135 requests for legal assistance in criminal cases were sent to the prosecutors' offices of the CIS member states, and 176 requests to other foreign countries.

The Department of International Legal Cooperation received 145 requests for legal assistance in criminal cases from the competent authorities of the CIS states, and forty-five requests from other foreign countries. There is no information on how many requests were sent to which country, or how many were received from there, although Hetq requested data by country.

Top image AI generated (Gemini)