The High Court has ordered the surrender of a woman identified as SB to Croatia under a European Arrest Warrant, so she can face prosecution over an allegation that she removed her child from Croatia in breach of a court order.
In a judgment delivered on 6 November 2023, Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo said the alleged conduct covered September 2016 to 10 December 2019. The warrant, issued on 16 February 2023 by a judge of the Municipal Court of Osijek, seeks prosecution. The court said SB was arrested in Ireland on 9 March 2023 and the warrant was produced to the High Court on 20 March.
The allegation is that SB took the child outside Croatia despite an order providing the child’s father with periods of access, including supervised access at his home. The judge found that a Croatian decision ordering SB’s detention pending trial, dated 12 November 2019, and later confirmation from the issuing judicial authority showed that a decision to prosecute covered the period set out in the warrant. He also rejected an objection based on the warrant being signed by a different judge from the one identified as the authorised representative: it had been signed by a judge.
The court held that the alleged conduct could correspond to the Irish offence of child abduction under section 16 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997. It reasoned that removing and keeping the child outside Croatia could subvert the access order, even though the order did not expressly prohibit taking the child abroad. The judge said a possible defence under Irish law did not determine whether the conduct corresponded to an Irish offence; he did not decide a further argument about the precise scope of one subsection’s defence.
SB argued that surrender would breach her and her child’s rights, citing alleged abuse by the child’s father, their life in Ireland since 2016, and the effects separation could have on her son. She also raised delay and relied on documents including court decisions, reports and a psychologist’s assessment. The judge said the High Court could not review the issuing state’s decisions on the evidence presented and found no sufficiently cogent evidence that surrender would expose SB to rights-violating treatment. He concluded that the circumstances, considered separately or together, did not meet the high threshold for refusing surrender on family-rights grounds.
The court also rejected the argument that the alleged offence fell outside Croatia’s territorial jurisdiction: it considered the alleged removal occurred in Croatia and the child’s continued absence formed part of the alleged breach. Finding that surrender was not precluded under the applicable legislation, the High Court made an order under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 for SB’s surrender to Croatia. The judgment determines the surrender application, not whether SB committed the alleged offence.