The High Court refused an application to surrender a woman to the Czech Republic under a European arrest warrant, finding that the warrant’s description of the alleged theft did not establish correspondence with an Irish offence.
In a judgment delivered on 30 May 2008, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the Czech warrant described the woman taking cash and other property from a man’s flat after he had fallen asleep. But it did not allege that she took the property without the owner’s consent or intended to deprive him of it. Those were essential elements of the Irish theft offence relied on, the judge said, and he could not add missing words to the warrant. He said the Czech authorities could issue a further warrant with additional details.
The application sought her surrender to serve the remaining part of a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed in 1996. The respondent argued that the sentence had become unenforceable under Czech limitation law before she left the country in July 2003, and that she therefore had not “fled” from an obligation to serve it. Her Czech lawyer had written to the authorities after an invitation to begin serving the sentence, asserting that the limitation period had expired; the letter received no response.
The issuing court in Prague maintained in letters sent in 2008 that the sentence was not time-barred. It said a new five-year limitation period began after the postponement of the sentence expired on 9 December 1998. The judge held that whether the sentence had expired was a matter for Czech courts. Given the Czech court’s position and the warrant, he treated the sentence as prima facie enforceable and concluded that the respondent had left while an obligation remained unresolved. He rejected the related objections that section 10 of Ireland’s European Arrest Warrant Act did not apply and that no enforceable order existed.
The judge also rejected the respondent’s claim that she had not been properly informed of her right to consent to surrender. Although an arrest affidavit referred to the wrong statutory section, he found the error had not deprived her of a substantive right.
The respondent further argued that the delay, her changed family circumstances and poor health made surrender unjust or unsafe. The judge said those matters did not give the High Court grounds to refuse surrender in this application; any Convention-rights issue arising on surrender would have to be addressed in the requesting state. He also said there was insufficient medical and prison-conditions evidence for the court to assess the health argument.
Despite rejecting those objections, the court refused the application because the warrant did not establish correspondence with the Irish offence. The judgment did not order surrender under that warrant.