The High Court ordered Grzegorz Jastrzebski’s surrender to Poland to serve a one-year prison sentence imposed there in 2002. Mr Justice Michael Peart ruled in January 2010 that a 2009 amendment to the European Arrest Warrant Act applied to the case, removing the relevance of whether Mr Jastrzebski had “fled” Poland.
The Polish judicial authority sought his surrender under a European arrest warrant issued on 23 January 2008. The High Court endorsed the warrant on 21 May 2008, and Mr Jastrzebski was arrested on 9 March 2009. His sentence related to two offences and had been suspended before the suspension was lifted in October 2005.
Mr Jastrzebski told the court in an affidavit that he came to Ireland in July 2006 and had not fled justice. He relied on a Polish court order postponing his sentence for six months from February 2006. That order referred to his seriously ill mother and his need to help care for younger siblings, but did not mention plans to move to Ireland. A further six-month postponement granted in 2008 was later reversed on appeal.
The court rejected three objections. On delay, Mr Jastrzebski argued that the requesting authority had not explained its pursuit of him and that he was settled in Ireland with his partner and child. The judge held that the delay did not bar surrender and that the requesting authority was not required to explain it in this conviction case.
The court also rejected an objection that the warrant did not specify how the one-year sentence was divided between the two offences. Both offences corresponded to offences under Irish law, the judge said, so the omission did not invalidate the warrant.
On the “fleeing” issue, the judge held that the amendment to section 10, which came into operation on 25 August 2009, applied to surrender hearings held after that date, regardless of when the warrant was issued or endorsed or when the person was arrested. The hearing took place in December 2009. Because the amended provision no longer referred to fleeing, that question did not prevent surrender. The court ordered surrender, while noting that the case remained subject to the other applicable provisions of the Act and the Framework Decision.