The High Court ruled that Istvanne Ficzere could not be surrendered to Hungary to serve a one-year-and-ten-month prison sentence because the required written undertaking about a retrial had not been given by the issuing judicial authority.
In a judgment delivered on 30 July 2008, Mr Justice Michael Peart considered an application under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The sentence had been imposed in Hungary in Ficzere’s absence on 29 April 2004 for swindling. The warrant said she had not been summoned or otherwise informed of the hearing date and place.
Section 45 of the Act bars surrender in those circumstances unless the issuing judicial authority gives a written undertaking that the person will be retried, or given an opportunity for a retrial, notified of its time and place, and allowed to attend.
Hungary’s Central Authority sent an undertaking promising those guarantees. It said the issuing judicial authority could not provide one under Hungarian law. Ficzere’s counsel argued that the Act required the undertaking to come from the issuing judicial authority, and that the Central Authority’s assurance could not satisfy that requirement. The Minister’s counsel argued that it could be transmitted on the judicial authority’s behalf and relied on statutory provisions concerning transmission of undertakings and presumed compliance with the European Arrest Warrant Framework Decision.
The judge held that the undertaking’s source mattered. The Act allowed the Central Authority to transmit an undertaking, he said, but did not allow it to replace the undertaking required from the issuing judicial authority with its own. He distinguished an earlier case in which undertakings from other officials had been attached to a certificate from the issuing judicial authority. Here, the undertaking was neither signed nor transmitted by that judicial authority.
The judgment also recounted evidence that challenged Ficzere’s account of her prior involvement in the Hungarian proceedings. A translated court record described her as the first accused at a June 2002 hearing, where she answered questions and said she was not guilty. The judge said this material called her credibility into question. Her separate objection that she had not fled Hungary was no longer pursued.
The court’s decision was limited to the statutory undertaking requirement: it held that surrender was prohibited by section 45. The judgment did not determine the underlying swindling allegation or order a retrial in Hungary.