The High Court has ordered the surrender of Łukasz Michał Tomkowiak to Poland to serve the remaining one year, seven months and nine days of a two-year prison sentence.
The European arrest warrant was issued by the Regional Court in Poznań in December 2017. Tomkowiak had originally been sentenced by the District Court in Poznań in July 2004 to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years. In May 2008, a Polish court ordered that the custodial sentence be executed.
Tomkowiak was arrested in Ireland on 22 April 2021 following a Schengen Information System alert.
He opposed surrender on two main grounds. First, he argued that the Irish court could not be sufficiently certain that the 2008 hearing had not altered the nature or length of his original sentence. He had not attended that hearing. Second, he argued that surrender would disproportionately interfere with his private and family life because of the passage of time and his established family ties in Ireland.
Mr Justice Burns rejected both arguments. The warrant showed that the sentence remained two years, with credit given for detention already served between October 2002 and March 2003. Because the 2008 decision merely activated the suspended sentence rather than changing it, the relevant hearing for Irish surrender law was the original trial. The warrant stated that Tomkowiak had attended that hearing.
The court also considered his evidence that he had a son born in Ireland, shared custody with the child’s mother and saw his son daily. However, the judge held that such circumstances were not sufficiently exceptional to prevent surrender.
The court found no incompatibility with Ireland’s constitutional or European Convention obligations and ordered Tomkowiak’s surrender to Poland under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.