The High Court refused a request to delay for six weeks the surrender of an anonymised man to Poland under a European arrest warrant. The application was made immediately after an earlier order directing his surrender. The court considered only whether to postpone surrender temporarily on humanitarian grounds; it did not revisit the surrender order in this judgment.
The warrant sought the man to serve a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed by a Polish district court in 2005 for offences corresponding in Ireland to robbery and assault causing harm. The High Court had made the surrender order on 25 May 2006, according to the judgment, and the man was arrested in Ireland in August 2010.
The man sought a six-week postponement to allow his daughter, identified as N., to undergo a psychological assessment and for a report to be prepared. His side relied on evidence that she had serious physical and developmental conditions and was receiving care in Ireland. He also said she was particularly attached to him and would be devastated by separation. The applicant opposed the delay, arguing that there was no medical evidence that immediate surrender would harm the child or disrupt the assessment.
The court said humanitarian grounds may concern a family member as well as the person facing surrender, where family life is engaged. But ordinary distress from separation would not be enough: the evidence must show specific, serious prejudice to the affected person. The court also said postponement must be warranted in all the circumstances, taking account of the public interest in extradition. Where a child is affected, the child’s best interests are “a” primary consideration, but they do not generally override that public interest.
The judge found that although N. had a range of health difficulties, there was no medical evidence that surrendering her father would aggravate them or cause physical or mental harm amounting to medical pathology. The claimed risk rested on the father’s unsupported assertion and belief. Uncertainty about how the family should care for N. or whether they should remain in Ireland did not establish humanitarian grounds. In any event, the court said, the circumstances did not reach the gravity required to justify even a six-week delay.
The court therefore declined the postponement application. It left the existing surrender order in place and did not decide definitively whether the EU Charter could be relied on in European arrest warrant proceedings; it said that issue was unnecessary to resolve in this case.