High Court refused Ian Bailey’s surrender to France over murder

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The High Court refused Ian Bailey’s surrender to France under a European arrest warrant concerning the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. The proceedings were reported on 14 October 2020.

The warrant sought Bailey’s surrender to serve a 25-year sentence imposed by the Cour d’Assises in Paris in May 2019 for the murder at Schull, County Cork, in December 1996. He was tried in his absence and had no legal representation at the French trial.

Gardaí investigated the killing and Bailey became a suspect. The Director of Public Prosecutions decided there should be no prosecution against him for any charge relating to the killing, and no prosecution was brought in Ireland. The file was reviewed several times and the decision not to prosecute was confirmed.

Mr Justice Paul Burns found that surrender remained precluded under section 44 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 because the required reciprocity between Irish and French jurisdiction was absent. He also found that Bailey retained an accrued or vested right arising from earlier Irish judicial decisions refusing surrender.

The High Court endorsed the warrant on 16 December 2019, and Bailey was admitted to bail that day. It was the third French warrant seeking his surrender. The Supreme Court had overturned an earlier surrender order in 2012, and the High Court later refused a second request, including on the ground that it was an abuse of process.