The High Court ordered Piotr Pacanowski’s surrender to Poland to serve four prison sentences after finding that he had been duly notified of the relevant hearings under Polish procedure. The court concluded that no written assurance of a retrial opportunity was required under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
In a judgment delivered on 5 December 2007, Mr Justice Michael Peart said Poland’s European arrest warrant sought Pacanowski’s surrender in connection with four offences for which he had been convicted and sentenced there. He had been arrested in Ireland on 3 September 2007. No points of objection had been filed, and Pacanowski did not dispute that he was the person named in the warrant.
The court said more than four months of imprisonment remained to be served, meeting the minimum gravity threshold. It also found that the offences not covered by the European arrest warrant’s Article 2.2 list corresponded to offences in Irish law: assault and robbery. The remaining offences were identified in the warrant as fraud and falsification and circulation of falsified official documents, for which the court said no double-criminality verification was required.
The court nevertheless considered whether section 45 required Poland to undertake that Pacanowski would be retried, or could seek a retrial and attend it. That issue arose because some proceedings had taken place in his absence. His lawyer argued the warrant was unclear about notification and suggested the court could seek further information from Poland.
Justice Peart noted discrepancies in the papers about a hearing date and a case-file reference for one offence. But he said they did not materially confuse the question of whether Pacanowski had been notified. Polish authorities stated that notices had been sent twice to the address he had provided, but were not collected, and that attempts to serve the court decision also failed. Their correspondence said notification was treated as correctly completed under Polish procedural rules.
The judgment said Pacanowski had not submitted an affidavit disputing compliance with those rules. In the circumstances, the court accepted the Polish authorities’ assertion that he had been duly notified. It added that absconding or changing address without informing the authorities would not itself prevent surrender if notification had complied with Polish procedure.
The court ordered surrender under section 16(1). The judgment records no separate order requiring a retrial assurance.