The High Court refused to surrender a Polish man to Poland after finding that the evidence showed he was wanted for investigation, but did not establish that a decision had been made to charge and try him.
The ruling was made under section 21A of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. The court held that surrender had to be refused because the Polish authorities had not confirmed that they intended to prosecute him for the alleged offence.
The warrant sought his surrender over an allegation that he had grown cannabis and produced at least three kilograms of marijuana with others between December 2005 and July 2006. The allegation was not a finding of guilt.
The man’s lawyer in Poland had said that prosecutors intended to interview him and would make a substantive decision about the proceedings afterward. The lawyer’s purported affidavit was undated, its jurat was incomplete, and the correspondence it cited was not produced. The court treated the document as an exhibit, as it had the lawyer’s letter, but considered the missing correspondence when assessing the evidence.
The High Court twice sought clarification from Poland about whether a decision to charge and try the man had been made. The first reply did not address the question directly. A later reply said that witness statements and expert opinions indicated that his conduct showed the features of the alleged acts. The court said this described the evidence but stopped short of confirming a charging decision. It also noted that the 2007 Polish decision provided for provisional arrest for 14 days from apprehension and described him as suspected of the offence. In the court’s view, that was consistent with arrest for investigation.
The judgment records that the man had been in Ireland since 2006, had married here and had two daughters born in Ireland. He argued that the delay and his family ties meant surrender would disproportionately interfere with family life. The court accepted that there had been considerable, largely unexplained delay, and said Polish prosecutors knew he was in Ireland by September 2007 at the latest. However, it was not satisfied that his evidence showed surrender would breach his family-life rights under section 37(1). That conclusion was separate from, and did not change, the refusal required under section 21A.