The High Court has deferred approval of a new surrender date for Martynas Žigelis to Lithuania, pending the conclusion of separate Irish proceedings on a second European arrest warrant.
Mr Žigelis was wanted under a Lithuanian warrant issued on 18 August 2008 to serve a four-month prison sentence imposed in 2005 for stealing a mobile phone. He consented to surrender in February 2011, and the High Court made an order for his surrender. The order was postponed while he served a nine-month Irish sentence, which began on 23 January 2011. He was released on 17 August that year.
When the Lithuanian authorities proposed 19 August 2011 as a new surrender date, the Minister for Justice and Equality told the court that Mr Žigelis had spent more time in custody awaiting surrender than the Lithuanian sentence required. The Minister’s position was that the sentence was therefore effectively served, given the requirement under Article 26 of the European Arrest Warrant Framework Decision to credit detention arising from execution of a warrant.
The High Court was told that Lithuania’s issuing judicial authority disagreed. It said time in Irish prison should not be deducted because it related to a domestic sentence, and that Lithuania would not withdraw the warrant. The court said Article 26 could support the Lithuanian interpretation, and might also support Mr Žigelis’s position. It was for courts in the issuing state to decide how the provision applied; the Irish court would not rule on that issue.
By the time the matter returned to the High Court on 26 September 2011, Mr Žigelis was also before it under a second Lithuanian warrant, dated 19 August 2011, concerning a new matter. The warrant had been endorsed in Ireland on 7 September, and he had been arrested under it. The court said the second warrant proceedings had to take their course before he could be surrendered under the first warrant, unless he consented to surrender under the second; he had not.
The court stayed surrender under the 2008 warrant until the Irish proceedings on the second warrant conclude. It continued Mr Žigelis’s bail under the first warrant and admitted him to bail pending a hearing under the second. It did not cancel the earlier surrender order or approve a replacement surrender date. The court said Lithuania remained entitled to insist that the order eventually be carried out, and that approval of a new date must await the second-warrant proceedings.