The Supreme Court has dismissed two appeals by Thomas Clarke and upheld an order for his surrender to the United Kingdom to complete prison sentences for three robberies.
Ms Justice Denham rejected Mr Clarke's separate challenge to the lawfulness of his detention following his arrest under a European Arrest Warrant while he was already serving a sentence in Portlaoise Prison.
Mr Clarke had been convicted at Leeds Crown Court in May 1994 after pleading guilty to three robbery offences and was sentenced to a total of nine years. He later escaped from lawful custody in the UK and came to Ireland.
After being convicted and imprisoned here, he escaped from Portlaoise Prison in April 1996. He travelled to the Netherlands, where he was arrested that June. Both Ireland and the UK sought his extradition. The Dutch authorities returned him to Ireland in October 1996, subject to a requirement that their consent be obtained before any onward surrender for earlier offences.
In 2003, the Netherlands expressly consented to his re-extradition to the UK for the three robbery convictions after the UK authorities agreed not to pursue an escape offence.
When a European Arrest Warrant was later issued, Mr Clarke was still serving his Irish sentence. A ministerial production order brought him from Portlaoise Prison to the Four Courts in August 2005, where he was formally arrested on foot of the warrant.
The Supreme Court held that the production order was an administrative mechanism and did not itself alter the legal basis of his imprisonment. It also rejected his contention that an arrest of someone already in custody was invalid or merely a procedural fiction.
The court further held that the Netherlands' 2003 consent remained effective despite the later change from traditional extradition procedures to the European Arrest Warrant system.
Claims of excessive delay, oppression and inhuman treatment were also rejected. The surrender order therefore remained in place, although the court noted that time spent detained on the European Arrest Warrant from 27 August 2005 could be relevant when calculating the remaining UK sentence.