The High Court has ordered Tomas Lisauskas’s surrender to Lithuania under a European arrest warrant, rejecting his remaining objection that the warrant lacked the judicial safeguards required by EU law.
In a judgment delivered on 5 March 2020, Mr Justice Binchy found that Lithuania had confirmed an appeal against the European arrest warrant was available. The issuing state said the appeal court could examine whether the conditions for issuing the warrant had been met, including whether it was proportionate. It also confirmed that legal aid was available for the appeal.
The case had returned to the High Court after the Supreme Court set aside an earlier surrender order and sent the matter back for reconsideration in light of a 2019 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. That ruling held that a prosecutor may issue a European arrest warrant if the prosecutor is independent, but where the issuer is not a court, the decision and its proportionality must be open to effective judicial review in the issuing state.
The respondent disputed that Lithuanian law allowed an appeal against the Prosecutor General’s decision to issue the warrant. His Lithuanian lawyer, Simas Tokarcakas, said the relevant criminal procedure provisions did not provide such a right and argued that an appeal would not be available at the current stage of the case. Lithuania’s Chief Prosecutor, however, confirmed twice that an appeal was available. Justice Binchy said he could not reconcile the competing accounts and decided the issue on the basis of the trust and confidence he was required to accord to the issuing state.
The court found that an appeal against the underlying national arrest warrant did not, by itself, provide effective judicial protection. The time to appeal that order had passed, and any extension was uncertain. But the court concluded that the separate appeal route against the European arrest warrant, with review of proportionality and access to legal aid, met the required safeguards.
The warrant relates to an allegation that Lisauskas robbed a man at knifepoint in Druskininkai in August 2012, taking a metal chain. The judgment records that this was the sole objection pursued at the hearing. The court said it was satisfied that the person before it was the person named in the warrant and that no other statutory bar to surrender applied. It rejected the objection and ordered surrender under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.