The High Court has ordered Tomasz Witkowski’s surrender to Poland to serve the remaining 1 year, 11 months and 6 days of a prison sentence imposed there. The order followed a hearing under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Tony Hunt on 26 March 2021, concerned a European arrest warrant issued on 12 August 2020. It sought enforcement of a joint sentence of four years and 10 months imposed by the Regional Court of Zamosc on 31 August 2018 for five offences.
The respondent raised two objections. He argued that one offence did not correspond to an offence under Irish law, and that surrender was barred because his Polish trial had taken place in his absence.
The disputed offence concerned an alleged attempt in December 2004 in Zamosc to force a woman identified in the warrant as E.S. into prostitution through threats of beating and bodily injury. The warrant said she refused and did not begin prostitution at the respondent’s escort agency. The court considered whether those particulars corresponded to Irish offences; it did not make a separate finding that the alleged conduct had occurred.
The judge accepted that the described threat did not meet the high threshold for the suggested Irish offence of threatening serious harm. However, he found correspondence with an attempted offence under section 9(c) of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993, which addresses compelling or coercing a person to be a prostitute for gain. He said “gain” could include a non-financial advantage and considered the respondent’s alleged attempt to recruit E.S. for his agency likely to have been for his advantage. He also found that, if E.S. was already a prostitute, the particulars corresponded to an offence under section 9(a), concerning control or direction of a prostitute’s activities.
On the absentia objection, the judge was doubtful that the warrant established the respondent had received official information about the trial: the summons had been returned by postal authorities. But he accepted the warrant’s account that the respondent had arranged legal representation and was represented at the trial that resulted in the sentence. He held that this met an alternative in section 45 and that there was no bar to surrender.
The court ordered surrender to Poland under section 16(1), subject to any credit due for time served in Ireland. The judgment does not state a specific amount of credit.