The High Court has ordered Trevor Adrian Davies’s surrender to the United Kingdom under a European arrest warrant, rejecting his objection that UK authorities waited until his Irish prison sentence was nearly complete before seeking him.
In a judgment delivered on 8 October 2010, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the warrant sought Davies’s surrender for prosecution on a large number of alleged offences said to have been committed between 1971 and 1997. The judgment classified them as offences within the European arrest warrant category of sexual exploitation of children. It did not set out details of the allegations.
Davies did not dispute that he was the person named in the warrant. The court said there was no basis under the relevant provisions of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 to refuse surrender, subject to its consideration of his single objection.
The objection concerned the timing of the UK request, rather than whether the delay would prevent a fair trial. Davies argued that the authorities had waited until he completed a seven-year Irish sentence for similar offences before seeking his surrender. He said the delay meant he faced trial years later and had lost a benefit he argued was available under section 19(2) of the 2003 Act: a reduction in his Irish sentence for time spent in custody in the issuing state after surrender.
The Minister’s counsel argued that interpreting section 19 in that way could mean a person serving an Irish sentence would avoid part of it if surrendered and later imprisoned abroad for separate offences. The court said that result was not contemplated by the European arrest warrant framework and would be absurd. It held that surrender could be postponed until an Irish sentence had been served, and that the UK authorities were entitled to wait until Davies’s sentence was almost complete before transmitting the warrant.
Justice Peart concluded that Davies had suffered no prejudice from the timing and rejected his interpretation of section 19. The court ordered surrender. The judgment does not determine whether Davies committed the alleged offences or what outcome any UK prosecution would have.