The High Court has permitted Petronel Pal’s surrender to Romania on charges of creating an organised criminal group to commit murder and aggravated murder, after finding that assurances about his detention addressed the risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. It declined to permit surrender on charges of attempted aggravated murder and aggravated robbery.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice McDermott on 9 March 2020, concerned a Romanian European Arrest Warrant issued in December 2017. Pal was arrested in Ireland in May 2019. The court said there was no dispute about his identification, the lawfulness of his arrest or compliance with the required procedures. He had not been tried in Romania; the court said an earlier hearing there concerned provisional detention.
Pal objected that the alleged offences took place in Ireland and could not be prosecuted here on an equivalent extraterritorial basis, and that Romanian prison conditions could expose him to treatment contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
On the organised crime group charge, the court found the alleged agreement to form a group to commit murder corresponded to an offence under Ireland’s conspiracy law. The judge noted that Pal had accepted in a bail application that he had been resident in Ireland for more than ten years. The court was satisfied that Ireland could prosecute an Irish citizen or a person ordinarily resident here for the relevant extraterritorial conspiracy, and that surrender on this charge was not prohibited by section 44 of the European Arrest Warrant Act.
The court reached a different conclusion on the attempted murder and aggravated robbery charges. It was not satisfied that Irish law provided an equivalent extraterritorial basis for those offences, or that conspiracy and criminal organisation offences supplied one in the circumstances. It therefore declined to direct surrender on those charges.
The court’s initial concerns about post-conviction detention focused on Iasi Prison. Romanian authorities later provided information that a person assigned to a maximum security or closed regime would be detained in Margineni Prison, together with assurances about minimum cell space and other conditions. The judge accepted these assurances as establishing that Pal would be held in Article 3-compliant conditions if convicted, including following any transfer during a sentence. The judgment records the court’s criticism that Romanian authorities had answered questions about Iasi in a piecemeal way, but concludes that surrender did not create a real or substantial risk of prohibited treatment.
The judgment concludes that Pal may be surrendered on the organised criminal group and aggravated murder charges. It does not direct surrender on the other two charges.