The High Court has ordered the surrender of Jan Balaz to the Czech Republic under a European Arrest Warrant, finding that no legal ground raised in the proceedings precluded surrender.
Ms Justice Caroline Biggs made the order under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 on 22 February 2022. The warrant seeks to enforce a three-year prison sentence imposed by the Regional Court in Ústí nad Labem in 2017 and confirmed by the High Court in Prague in 2018.
The warrant concerns drug offences. Its description alleges that Balaz arranged for medicines containing pseudoephedrine to be brought from Poland to the Czech Republic for use in producing methamphetamine. It also alleges that he took part in producing at least 360g of the drug with two other defendants. These are the offences described in the warrant; the Irish court was deciding whether to surrender him, not conducting a new trial of those allegations.
Balaz objected to surrender, including on the grounds that the warrant did not establish the required correspondence with Irish offences, that surrender would interfere disproportionately with his constitutional and European Convention rights, and that section 45 requirements had not been met. After the court sought further information from the issuing authority, his counsel made no substantive submission resisting the application.
The judge found that the warrant certified the offences as illicit trafficking in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, an offence category covered by the applicable Framework Decision, and that there was no manifest error or ambiguity in that certification. On that basis, correspondence with an Irish offence did not have to be established under section 38(1)(b).
On section 45, the court found that Balaz had been present at the first-instance trial, had been represented by a lawyer he chose, and had appealed both conviction and sentence. He was represented by appointed counsel at the appeal hearing in Prague. The judge was satisfied that his section 45 rights had been observed.
The court also considered his family and personal circumstances. Balaz had lived in Ireland since about 2016, had a wife and two children living with him, and was employed at the time of arrest. His submissions accepted that the affidavit did not provide the cogent evidence required to support an Article 8 objection. The judge concluded that surrender was not precluded and ordered it to the Czech Republic.