Kim Dotcom Extradition Hearing Postponed Until 2013

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom will not have his extradition case heard until next year, a New Zealand court has ruled.

Two judicial reviews over the legality of search warrants used to raid Dotcom’s mansion are currently underway, meaning the August hearing has now been postponed until 25 March 2013, although that is still a tentative date that could change.

Dotcom faces possible extradition from New Zealand to the US over charges that the Megaupload site, which the US Department of Justice closed down in January, infringed intellectual property rights by hosting and sharing copyright content.

Kim Dotcom, the saga goes on…

“It was inevitable that the hearing for August was going to be vacated because we have two existing cases in the High Court,” William Akel, one of Dotcom’s lawyers, told Reuters.

“You obviously want the extradition case to go ahead as soon as you can, but you have to put up with the inevitable.”

A New Zealand court is trying to decide whether or not Dotcom should be extradited to the US, where he faces copyright charges and the threat of up to 20 years in prison.

Police problems?

Police errors could be playing into Dotcom’s hands. Last month, a New Zealand High Court declared that the search warrants, used in the raid on Dotcom’s residence, were “invalid”, as they weren’t specific enough to be used in the case.

Chief Justice Helen Winkelmann also ruled that the FBI had no right to copy seven hard drives of digital evidence and send it to the US without the proper consent of New Zealand authorities.

In March, a judge declared the restraining order obtained by police authorising the 20 January raid was “null and void” and had “no legal effect”, opening the door for Dotcom to recover the millions of pounds’ worth of possessions seized in a January raid on his New Zealand mansion.

Megaupload was closed down by the US Department of Justice in January, as part of a multinational co-operative move against intellectual property rights infringement. The founder of the company Kim Dotcom and three of his employees were taken into custody by New Zealand police.

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