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American Convention, specifically the rights to life and to humane treatment. Therefore, no matter
what the domestic laws provide, international human rights law establishes the minimum safeguards
that States must guarantee to ensure extradition does not create situations in which the exercise of
those rights is in peril. All those safeguards were described in the preceding sections.
254. The obligation to demand assurances that the death penalty will not be enforced
derives not just from the American Convention, as a corollary to the duty to guarantee the right to life in
the terms described above, but also from Peru’s own domestic laws, whose extradition regulations
make those assurances mandatory.
255. Thus, while Article 1 of the Bilateral Extradition Treaty between Peru and the People’s
Republic of China establishes the obligation to extradite, Article 5 of that treaty states that “[e]xtradition
shall only be carried out if it is not contrary to the requested Contracting Party’s system of laws.”
256. Article 516 of the Peruvian Code of Criminal Procedure provides that “]t]he granting of
extradition is conditional on the existence of guarantees of the fair administration of justice.”
Specifically, Article 517(3) of that Code establishes the conditions under which extradition shall not be
ordered; subparagraph (d) states the following: “The crime for which extradition is sought carries the
death penalty in the requesting State and the latter does not give assurances that the death penalty will
not be applied.”
257. As for the documentation that, under Peru’s domestic laws and the bilateral extradition
treaty, must accompany the request for extradition, Article 518 of the Peruvian Code of Criminal
Procedure provides that an extradition request must contain “(a) (…) the crime (under which) the
punishable act is classified in law. (…) (d) The text of the criminal and procedural laws relevant to the
case, as provided in the preceding paragraph (…).” Article 7 (d) of the Bilateral Extradition Treaty
between Peru and the People’s Republic of China lists among the “required documentation” the “texts
of the legal provisions pertaining to criminal jurisdiction, the crime and the sentence that the crime can
carry.” Subparagraph 3 of that article provides that “[t]he extradition request and its supporting
documents (…) shall have their translations into the language of the requested Contracting Party
attached.”
258. From the foregoing it follows that under its own domestic laws, the Peruvian State had
an obligation to demand sufficient assurances of proper administration of justice, and assurances that
the death penalty would not be applied. Under Peru’s own domestic laws, the extradition request had
to meet a number of minimum requirements. It was vital that the Peruvian State demand strict
compliance with these requirements because of the need to observe the laws in extradition processes,
and also because a number of these requirements concern the information and documentation needed
to properly weigh the assurances offered by the requesting State.
259. Given the evolution of the events in this case, particularly the various advisory
resolutions issued and habeas corpus rulings delivered, the Commission will now do its analysis based
on the above standards and as a function of the obligation to provide judicial protection and comply
with court rulings. The analysis will be in three sections: (i) analysis of the state authorities’ actions
between the time the extradition request was filed in November 2008 and issuance of the first advisory
resolution on January 20, 2009; (ii) analysis of the state authorities’ actions between the time the first
petition of habeas corpus was filed and the second advisory resolution was issued on January 27, 2010;