The High Court refused to surrender Mohammed Imran to the United Kingdom under a European arrest warrant, holding that section 41 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 barred surrender because he had already been convicted of dangerous driving arising from the same driving incident.
The warrant, issued on 24 August 2016, sought Mr Imran’s surrender for prosecution for dangerous driving causing death. He had pleaded guilty to dangerous driving in the UK and served 21 months in prison. The new allegation arose from the same crash; the injured woman was alleged to have died from her injuries 11 years later.
Mr Imran had initially objected to surrender, then consented. He said he wanted to deal with the matter in the UK, where much of his life was centred, and intended to argue there that a trial would amount to double jeopardy. His consent did not permit the High Court to order surrender if the statutory prohibition applied.
The court considered section 41(1), which bars surrender for prosecution where the alleged act or omission constitutes, in whole or in part, an offence for which final judgment has been given in Ireland or another member state. The Minister argued that the prohibition did not cover an earlier judgment in the issuing state, the UK. The court rejected that interpretation, relying on the wording of the legislation and its reading of European case law and earlier Irish decisions.
The judgment followed the approach taken in *Minister for Justice and Equality v Guz* [2012] IEHC 388. In that case, the High Court held that section 41’s reference to acts constituting an offence “in whole or in part” could cover more than the European framework’s reference to the “same acts”. The court said the same legal reasoning applied here.
The judge held that the earlier dangerous-driving conviction amounted to a final judgment in respect of at least part of the dangerous-driving-causing-death offence, because both arose from the same driving acts. She stressed the limits of that conclusion: it did not decide whether Mr Imran could be tried under UK law, or whether someone in similar circumstances could be tried in Ireland. It decided only that he could not be surrendered to the UK on this warrant, even with his consent.
The court therefore refused surrender. It also noted that it could not dispense with bail conditions needed to ensure a requested person’s availability for surrender proceedings. The judgment did not order his return to the UK.