The High Court has refused to surrender Said Mohamed Ebaid to Spain, finding that a final Egyptian acquittal related to the same alleged drug-trafficking acts and barred surrender under section 41(2) of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
Ms Justice Caroline Biggs gave judgment on 5 April 2022. Spain sought Ebaid’s surrender for prosecution over alleged drug trafficking. The European Arrest Warrant, issued on 31 July 2014, alleged that he belonged to an international network involved in a plan to bring hashish into Europe from Morocco in 2013.
The warrant described a fishing boat being boarded at sea on 31 May 2013. It said 654 bales of hashish, weighing about 16 tonnes, were found in its holds. These were allegations set out in the warrant, not findings made in this judgment.
Ebaid argued that he had already been tried for the same offence in Egypt. He said he was detained there for about four months after returning in 2019 and was acquitted. His Egyptian lawyer provided a translated court record stating that he was found not guilty on 23 June 2019 and that the judgment was final and could not be appealed. The court said the lawyer’s bona fides and the authenticity of the documents she supplied were not in dispute.
Spanish authorities said they had no knowledge of the allegations about proceedings in Egypt. They maintained that Ebaid had left Spain without judicial authorisation and said the Spanish investigation had been conducted without Egyptian authorities’ involvement. Egyptian authorities did not respond to requests seeking confirmation of the judgment.
The court considered whether the Egyptian proceedings concerned the “same acts” as those in the Spanish warrant. It concluded that, on a plain reading of the Egyptian judgment, Ebaid had been charged over the same alleged narcotics-trafficking conduct and acquitted after the evidence was considered. The court found that the acquittal was final and could not be refuted on the information before it.
The court therefore held that surrender was prohibited by section 41(2) and refused Spain’s request. It did not adjudicate on Ebaid’s separate abuse-of-process objection, noting that the applicant had filed no written submissions on that issue and neither side made oral submissions. An objection based on the alleged extra-territorial nature of the offence had been withdrawn.