The High Court has ordered Eduardas Tagijevas’s surrender to Lithuania to serve the remaining nine months and 29 days of a 10-month custodial sentence for theft. The order followed the court’s rejection of his claim that prison conditions there created a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment.
The European Arrest Warrant was issued in May 2014 and endorsed for execution in Ireland in July 2014. Tagijevas was arrested in August 2014. The judgment said the sentence arose from two offences: theft and criminal damage, after a car window was broken and a heater was taken from the vehicle.
Tagijevas argued that surrender was prohibited under section 37 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In an affidavit, he described overcrowding, long periods locked in a cell, poor facilities, violence between prisoners and inadequate dental care during a previous sentence at Lithuania’s Lukiskes prison from 2009 to 2012. He also alleged that prison staff beat him after he complained about dental care.
His expert, Professor Rodney Morgan, relied on reports by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT). He described concerns about overcrowding at Lukiskes and violence, staffing and conditions at prisons for sentenced prisoners. Morgan said there was a possibility of unacceptable conditions if Tagijevas were placed at Lukiskes and a high probability of inter-prisoner exploitation and violence at a sentenced-prison facility. Lithuanian authorities said prison numbers had fallen, improvements were under way and remand prisons were no longer full.
Justice Donnelly found that Tagijevas’s account was historical and related to his time as a remand prisoner, while he would be serving a sentence. The court accepted he might spend up to 10 days in a remand prison before being assigned to a sentenced-prison facility, but found that period did not establish a real risk of prohibited treatment.
The court also considered four prisons identified as possible destinations. It found the evidence about some facilities outdated, and said there was insufficient evidence about current conditions in protective custody at Alytus or elsewhere. Although the court described the risk relating to inter-prisoner violence as marginal, it was not satisfied that substantial grounds showed a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment.
The court therefore held that surrender was not prohibited and made an order directing Tagijevas’s surrender to a person authorised by Lithuania to receive him. The judgment did not name the prison to which he would be sent.