The Court of Appeal has dismissed Patrick Joseph Mangan’s appeal against an order for his surrender to Spain under a European Arrest Warrant concerning alleged drug trafficking.
The appeal focused on phone calls between Mangan, who was in Ireland, and Anthony Joseph O’Neill, whose Spanish phone had been intercepted under a judicial order in Spain. The High Court found that the Spanish authorities tapped O’Neill’s phone, not Mangan’s Irish phone. That finding was not challenged on appeal.
Mangan argued that his constitutional right to privacy was engaged because he was in Ireland when the calls were recorded, and that surrender should therefore be barred under the European Arrest Warrant Act. The appeal raised two certified questions: whether the right was engaged in those circumstances, and, if so, whether reliance on the calls at trial would prohibit surrender.
Delivering judgment on 11 December 2017, Mr Justice Mahon said Ireland’s Constitution did not apply to lawful activity undertaken in Spain. The court held that Mangan’s Irish constitutional right to privacy was not engaged by Spain’s interception of communications to or from a phone in that country. It answered the first certified question “No” and said the second question did not need to be answered.
The court also noted that the lawfulness of the Spanish interception order had not been challenged in the Spanish courts, which it described as the appropriate venue for such a challenge. It referred to the statutory presumption that an issuing state would comply with the European Arrest Warrant Framework Decision and to the expectation that Spanish courts would afford Mangan his rights there.
The High Court had made the surrender order on 16 March 2017, staying it pending the appeal. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and upheld that order. It was satisfied that surrender would breach neither Mangan’s constitutional rights nor his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgment did not itself establish the allegations of drug trafficking or decide the merits of any Spanish trial.