The High Court has ordered the surrender of an anonymised Irish respondent to Sweden, where he is sought for prosecution on one count of rape. The court rejected his objections that surrender would expose him to a flagrant denial of justice or disproportionately interfere with his family life.
In a judgment delivered on 16 December 2015, Ms Justice Donnelly considered a European arrest warrant issued on 16 December 2014. The allegation is that the respondent raped a woman in Stockholm County in November 2012. He accepts that sexual contact occurred but says it was consensual. The judgment makes no finding on guilt.
The respondent argued that he would probably be held in pre-trial detention in Sweden, where there is no bail system equivalent to Ireland’s. His Swedish lawyer said release was uncommon for someone suspected on probable cause of a serious offence such as rape. Swedish authorities confirmed that detention could be replaced by travel and reporting restrictions, and that the law requires a weighing of the suspect’s detriment against other interests.
The court found that Swedish law allows pre-trial release and that the evidence did not establish a system contrary to Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It treated probable cause for a serious offence as an evidential basis for considering risks such as absconding or interference with evidence, rather than an unlawful presumption against release. The respondent had not shown substantial grounds for believing there was a real risk of a flagrant denial of justice.
The respondent also challenged the detention decision made by the Attunda District Court in Sweden. The High Court said the decision could be appealed there, but that appeal had not been used. It found nothing on the face of the decision that called for the Irish court to second-guess the Swedish court’s assessment. A separate objection concerning restrictions on remand prisoners was not pursued in oral argument, and the court found no basis to prohibit surrender on that ground.
The court rejected the respondent’s Article 8 objection, which referred to his young child. It said the public interest in surrender for prosecution of the serious allegation outweighed the interference with family and personal life; no exceptional harm to the respondent or his family had been established.
The court also held that ongoing enquiries in Sweden did not rebut the statutory presumption that a decision had been made to charge and try him. It concluded that no ground under the 2003 Act prohibited surrender and made an order under section 16 for his surrender to an authorised representative of Sweden.