The High Court ordered the surrender of Kieran Thomas Draisey under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, as amended, after rejecting his argument that delay made surrender unjust or oppressive.
Mr Justice Michael Peart delivered the judgment on 24 November 2006. The warrant concerned six alleged offences, including kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and making a threat to kill. The court said the warrant met the statutory requirements, the person before it was the person named in the warrant, and the offences met the minimum gravity threshold. It also found the required correspondence with Irish offences for the assault and threat charges.
The respondent’s counsel argued that the alleged offences dated from September 1995 to December 1998 and that charges were brought around January 1999. The respondent said he had lived openly in Ireland since 1999, that his former partner knew where he was, and that he had built a life there with a young son in his care. He also described an alleged assault by a UK police officer; the officer denied that allegation in an affidavit.
A Crown Prosecution Service barrister said he had been informed that the respondent’s whereabouts were traced to Ireland in April 2005, after which police sought to identify his address. The judge found the explanation for the delay vague and unspecific. No issue had been taken with the respondent’s claim that his whereabouts were known or could have been found through appropriate enquiries.
However, the court held that unexplained delay alone did not justify refusing surrender. The judge found no specific impairment of the respondent’s ability to defend the charges and no particular prejudice asserted. He said the respondent’s new life in Ireland and the alleged police assault did not amount to exceptional circumstances on the evidence presented. The court concluded that surrender was not prohibited under Part III of the Act and ordered it under section 16.