The High Court has refused to surrender Jozef Toráč to Slovakia to serve a three-year prison sentence because of concerns over a trial conducted in his absence.
The European arrest warrant concerned Toráč’s involvement in the illegal crossing of several Indian nationals into Slovakia and their subsequent transportation into Austria. Slovak authorities classified the offence as facilitation of unauthorised entry and residence.
Toráč was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on 18 December 2017. None of that sentence had been served when he was arrested in Ireland in May 2021.
The central issue was not the underlying offence but how the Slovak proceedings had been conducted. The warrant stated that Toráč had not personally participated and had instead been represented by a court-appointed lawyer.
Toráč told the High Court that he had lived in Ireland since February 2007, had not known criminal proceedings were being brought against him and had never instructed or authorised a lawyer to represent him.
Importantly, the Minister accepted that the warrant’s stated justification for the trial in Toráč’s absence was incorrect: Toráč had not given a lawyer a mandate to act for him. His evidence that he had been unaware of the proceedings was not contradicted.
Slovak authorities later said Toráč had rights to an appeal and retrial. However, when the High Court asked for details, including applicable time limits, confirmation that those limits had not expired and the statutory conditions governing those remedies, the issuing authority declined to provide them.
Mr Justice Burns said the court could not simply infer that Toráč’s defence rights would be adequately protected. An essential safeguard for surrender after an absent trial is clear information about the right to a fresh hearing or appeal and the time available to seek it.
The court was not satisfied that those protections had been established. Surrender was therefore barred under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 and the application was refused.