The High Court has ordered the surrender of Vladislav Silko to Lithuania under a European Arrest Warrant, rejecting objections concerning his absence from a 2018 sentence-revocation hearing and the risk of poor prison conditions.
In a judgment delivered on 3 May 2022, Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo said the warrant sought Silko’s surrender to serve an aggregate sentence of three years and two months. The sentence combined penalties imposed for convictions for 23 offences on three occasions in 2016 and 2017. Its suspension was revoked on 20 September 2018.
Silko was arrested in Ireland on 14 January 2022. His objections included that the circumstances of the 2018 revocation were unclear, including references in Lithuanian court material to “administrative offences”. He argued that surrender could breach protections under Irish law and the European Convention on Human Rights because he had not attended that hearing.
The Minister for Justice said Lithuanian authorities had confirmed Silko would have a right of appeal and a retrial concerning the revocation. The judge concluded that this right covered the 2018 hearing, including the administrative offences referred to in the material. He also found that the only sentence Silko would have to serve on return was the sentence for which surrender was sought. The court therefore found no bar under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act.
The court also considered whether the Lithuanian offences had corresponding offences under Irish law. For two disputed offences involving the acquisition of bank data, the judge read each offence alongside related conduct described in the warrant. He found that the data had been procured without lawful authority in the context of subsequent attempts to obtain credit, and that the conduct corresponded to offences under Irish law. The judgment also found correspondence for the other offences requiring that assessment.
Silko argued that prison conditions in Lithuania created a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment, citing a US Department of Justice report and a Northern Ireland High Court decision. The Minister relied on information provided by Lithuanian authorities about prison conditions. The judge said the material raised no new issue beyond those considered in earlier Irish cases and found Silko had not established substantial grounds for believing he would face a real risk to his fundamental rights. He rejected the prison-conditions objection.
The court found surrender was not precluded by the European Arrest Warrant Act or another provision of the Act and ordered surrender to Lithuania under section 16. The judgment records that three grounds in the original objection were not pursued at the hearing.