The High Court has ordered the surrender of Gintautas Maciulskas to Lithuania to serve almost all of a one-year-and-three-month prison sentence.
Lithuanian authorities sought his return under a European arrest warrant issued by the Kaunas Regional Court in December 2020. One year, two months and 28 days of the sentence remained to be served.
Maciulskas was arrested in Ireland on 25 April 2021 after being identified through a Schengen Information System alert. He challenged surrender on several grounds.
First, he argued that his arrest was unlawful because the High Court had already endorsed the European arrest warrant before Gardaí arrested him using the Schengen alert procedure. Mr Justice Paul Burns rejected that argument. He held that Irish law provides alternative arrest mechanisms and that Gardaí may arrest a person named in such an alert even where the underlying warrant has already been endorsed.
Maciulskas also argued that his Lithuanian trial was unfair because evidence referred to previous violence against a victim when assessing threats he had made. The court held that differences between Irish and Lithuanian evidential rules were not enough to justify refusing surrender. A refusal would require a much more fundamental defect in the foreign process.
The final objection concerned Lithuanian prison conditions. A 2019 report based on a 2018 visit had identified serious inter-prisoner violence in several institutions, including Marijampole Prison. Lithuania's Ministry of Justice subsequently supplied information on measures introduced to isolate prisoners posing threats, increase staffing and supervision, improve monitoring and maintain minimum living standards.
The High Court found that this updated information allayed its concerns. It was not satisfied there was a real risk that Maciulskas would face treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
All objections were rejected. The court therefore directed his surrender to Lithuania under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.