The High Court has ordered the surrender of a man to the Czech Republic to serve a 10-month prison sentence for driving while disqualified.
In a judgment delivered on 18 March 2021, Mr Justice Paul Burns said the sentence was imposed on 12 September 2018 for a driving offence committed on 15 April that year. The court made the surrender order under section 16(1) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
The warrant was issued on 12 October 2018 by a judge of the District Court in Tachov. The High Court endorsed it on 2 November 2020. The respondent was arrested and brought before the court on 10 February 2021. His identity as the person named in the warrant was not disputed.
The judgment said the offence corresponded to driving without a licence under Irish law. Although the warrant described other acts and offences, the court accepted additional information that these were background and that surrender was sought only to enforce the sentence for one road traffic offence. The judge was satisfied there was no intention to prosecute or detain the man in the Czech Republic for another offence in breach of the European Arrest Warrant framework.
The respondent opposed surrender, arguing there was a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment because of Czech prison conditions. In an affidavit, he described overcrowding and spending 23 hours a day in his cell during earlier imprisonment in three Czech prisons. His account did not state when he had been imprisoned; his counsel told the court it was in 2016.
The court said the material did not meet the required initial threshold for evidence of current detention deficiencies. The judge noted that a 2019 report by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture had described conditions generally as satisfactory, and did not cover the prisons mentioned by the respondent. The court also found no supporting evidence for his belief about Covid-19 infection and death rates.
The judge dismissed the objections to surrender, finding the statutory presumption that the issuing state would respect fundamental rights had not been rebutted. The court said it would make the surrender order. The judgment records no separate order setting a surrender date.