VILNIUS, July 31 (RAPSI) - The Constitutional Court of Latvia rejected a claim filed by Deniss Calovskis, a hacker waiting to be extradited to the US, who asked the court to review the Latvian-US extradition treaty.
Previously, the court rejected a similar claim by Calovskis, stating that the judicial motivation behind it was insufficient.
Calovskis' lawyers believe that his extradition to the US will result in a serious damage to his rights and freedoms. The defense team states that the Latvian-US extradition treaty is unclear on how his constitutional rights will be upheld once extradited. The Constitutional Court responded that the treaty says, in "black and white," that both sides are compelled to preserve human rights under it.
According to mixnews.lv, Calovskis, 27, who resides in Riga, has been charged with using a Gozi virus to infect over a million computers worldwide, including at NASA, the US space agency. He allegedly worked on the virus together with Russian national Nikita Kuzmin and Romanian national Mihai Ionut Paunescu.
US law enforcement officers arrested Kuzmin during his visit to California in 2010 and persuaded him to cooperate. He helped prosecutors nab the other two men, who were arrested in 2012 in their home countries and are awaiting extradition.
Kuzmin has been accused of developing the virus. Calovskis has been accused of modifying the virus, so that it could mimic a bank website, prompting account holders to divulge personal information.
Paunescu has been accused of hosting command and control servers, thus shielding them to evade detection.