The High Court has ordered the surrender of a man to Romania under a European arrest warrant, rejecting his objection that Romanian prison conditions created a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment.
In a judgment delivered on 16 April 2021, Mr Justice Paul Burns dismissed the objection under section 37 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 and said the court would make a surrender order under section 16(1). The court found surrender would not be incompatible with Ireland’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, its protocols or the Constitution.
The warrant sought the man’s return to serve a four-year prison sentence imposed in Romania on 6 February 2019 and upheld on appeal on 4 June 2019. The sentence concerned an offence involving the making and sharing of sexual images of a 13-year-old girl. The judgment said the sentence remained to be served. The court was satisfied the man before it was the person named in the warrant, that the minimum gravity threshold was met and that the offence corresponded to offences under Irish law. It also found no issue arose concerning his presence at trial.
The man’s sole objection was that prison conditions in Romania exposed him to a real risk of prohibited treatment. His solicitor submitted reports from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and a Romanian lawyer. The committee report described generally poor prison conditions and continuing overcrowding, while noting that overcrowding varied between facilities and had reduced since 2014.
The Romanian lawyer considered that the man was likely to begin in a closed regime, possibly at Bacau Penitentiary. Material cited in the judgment included reports of overcrowding in that regime. At the court’s request, the Romanian issuing authority supplied a letter from the National Administration of Penitentiaries describing likely placements and conditions. It said the man would initially spend 21 days in quarantine at Bucharest-Rahova Penitentiary, with at least three square metres of individual space. It also gave an assurance of at least three square metres throughout the sentence, excluding restroom space, and described possible later changes in regime and prison.
Justice Burns gave significant weight to the assurances, which he said were specific to the man, the likely regimes and the institutions. Considering all the information, he was not satisfied there were substantial grounds to believe the man faced a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. He also found the statutory presumption that EU member states comply with fundamental rights had not been rebutted.
The ruling resolves the objection and provides for a surrender order; the judgment does not state that the surrender had already taken place.