The High Court has ordered Donatas Ravickas’s surrender to Lithuania for prosecution over alleged offences involving participation in a criminal organisation, human trafficking and drug trafficking.
In a judgment delivered on 25 July 2022, Mr Justice Paul Burns dismissed Ravickas’s objections to surrender and made an order under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The ruling decides the surrender application; it does not determine whether Ravickas committed the offences. He is sought to stand trial.
The Lithuanian warrant alleged that a criminal organisation recruited vulnerable people in Lithuania and brought them to Ireland and Northern Ireland, where they were exploited to distribute drugs. It also alleged that the group’s activities involved members in several countries, with money from drug trafficking returned to Lithuania and legalised there. These are allegations set out in the warrant and additional information from Lithuanian authorities.
Ravickas argued that surrender for the drug offence was barred by section 44 because the alleged conduct took place outside Lithuania and Ireland did not exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction on the same basis. The Minister for Justice accepted that section 44 would bar surrender for that offence if it was alleged to have been committed only outside Lithuania.
The judge found that the alleged criminal enterprise was a transnational conspiracy, with activity in Lithuania as well as Ireland and Northern Ireland. He concluded that, on the information before the court, the alleged drug offence was committed across all three jurisdictions, including Lithuania. Ravickas therefore had not met the first requirement of section 44, and the judge dismissed that objection. The court did not need to decide the section’s second requirement.
The judge also rejected Ravickas’s argument that the warrant lacked sufficient particulars under section 11(1A). He found that the warrant and supplementary information set out the alleged offences, their circumstances and locations, Ravickas’s alleged involvement, and the applicable penalties. He was satisfied that the information provided would not cause injustice in contesting surrender or, after surrender, addressing the case in Lithuania.
Other objections, including one concerning whether the issuing authority was judicial, a section 21A objection, and an objection about Lithuanian prison conditions, were not maintained. The section 21A objection was withdrawn following a Supreme Court judgment. The High Court concluded that surrender was not precluded under the 2003 Act.