The High Court ordered the surrender of Arturas Raustys to Lithuania under a European Arrest Warrant, so he can face prosecution there on charges of robbery and simple possession of drugs. Mr Justice Michael Peart delivered judgment on 31 October 2007.
The warrant was dated 6 March 2007 and was executed when Mr Raustys was arrested on 17 April 2007. The judge found that the alleged conduct would correspond to offences in Ireland and met the minimum gravity requirement. Identity was not disputed, and the case did not involve a trial or sentence in absentia.
Mr Raustys objected to surrender under constitutional, European human rights and European Arrest Warrant Act protections. He said Lithuanian police had beaten him after his arrest in December 2001, and that he feared being returned to the same officers. He described injuries that required hospital treatment and said he had complained to police. He also relied on reports about the treatment of people in police custody in Lithuania.
The Minister disputed that the evidence established a police assault. The hospital report said Mr Raustys had told staff he was assaulted by “several men”; it did not identify the assailants as police. The Minister also relied on Lithuania’s response to the reports, reforms and safeguards, its EU membership and the mutual trust underpinning the European arrest warrant system.
The judge found that an anonymously faxed, partially translated medical record could not be relied on to corroborate the claim that police carried out the assault. The document appeared to have been altered by inserting a word translated as “police”, and its provenance was unexplained. The separate hospital report supported that Mr Raustys had injuries consistent with an assault, but did not corroborate that police were responsible.
The court therefore found that Mr Raustys had not established the factual basis for his objection to the required degree. The judge added that, even if the assault had been established, the evidence would not show that surrender in 2007 created a real risk of a repeat. He cited mutual trust between EU member states and said the material before him did not establish that Lithuania was failing to meet its obligations.
The court ordered surrender. The judgment determined the surrender application; it did not decide whether Mr Raustys committed the alleged offences in Lithuania.