On 12 July 2023, the Committee of Ministers ended its supervision of the execution of the Romeo Castaño v. Belgium judgment.
This case concerned the unsufficiently thorough scrutiny by the Belgian courts of the grounds for refusing to execute the arrest warrants issued in 2004, 2005 and 2015 by Spain against the person suspected of having shot the applicants' father, a lieutenant-colonel murdered in 1981 by a commando claiming to belong to the terrorist organisation ETA.
Following that judgment, the Spanish authorities issued a fourth arrest warrant and the Belgian courts carried out a further detailed examination of the situation, namely whether or not there was a real and individualisable risk of a breach of the Convention rights in the event of the surrender of the person concerned or of structural shortcomings in the conditions of detention in Spain. Contrary to previous scrutinies, this new examination resulted in an agreement to execute the arrest warrant and the person concerned was therefore handed over to the Spanish authorities at the end of 2020.
