The High Court has ordered Marcin Miroslaw Gelo’s surrender to Poland under a European Arrest Warrant, after rejecting objections concerning his absence from an appeal hearing and his family life in Ireland.
Mr Justice David Keane delivered the judgment on 19 June 2023. The warrant, issued by the District Court in Krakow on 4 July 2018, seeks his return to serve the remainder of a three-year prison sentence imposed for robbery and armed robbery. The judgment states that one year, five months and ten days remained to be served.
Mr Gelo argued that surrender was barred under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 because he was not present at the December 2009 appeal hearing and had not been informed of it or instructed a lawyer to appeal. The Polish issuing authority told the court that notices were sent to an address Mr Gelo had repeatedly given as his residence and for service, but were not collected. It also said the same court-appointed lawyer represented him at trial and appeal, with an articled clerk standing in for that lawyer at the appellate hearing.
The judge concluded that the lawyer’s mandate covered the appeal and that Mr Gelo had made an informed choice to avoid service. He found that his defence rights were adequately protected and dismissed the section 45 objection.
Mr Gelo also argued that surrender would disproportionately interfere with his private and family life. In an affidavit, he said he had lived in Ireland with his family since 2012, was stepfather to his partner’s two teenage children and father to an infant, and had worked in several jobs. The judge said those circumstances did not meet the high threshold for refusing surrender. He also found that Mr Gelo had left Poland while on conditional release without informing authorities of his whereabouts, and that the Polish authority could not take further steps until it received information in March 2018 that he might be in Ireland. The section 37 objection was dismissed.
Having found the statutory requirements for surrender satisfied, the judge made an order under section 16(2) directing Mr Gelo’s surrender to a person authorised by Poland to receive him.