The High Court has ruled that Josef Adam may be surrendered to the Czech Republic under a European Arrest Warrant, finding that his objections did not establish a legal bar to surrender. The court did not decide whether his right to a trial within a reasonable time had been breached; it said that issue and any remedy should first be addressed by the Czech courts.
Mr Justice John Edwards delivered the judgment on 3 March 2011. The warrant sought Mr Adam’s return for trial on 22 alleged offences dating from between August 2002 and July 2003. He did not consent to surrender and argued that delays in the Czech proceedings breached his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The judgment records that Mr Adam was held in pre-trial custody from July 2003 until December 2004, according to information from the issuing court. He later remained in prison on a separate conviction until April 2005. Several trial dates in 2004 passed without a trial. A gap followed before further dates were set, and Mr Adam attended court in January 2008. The Czech court’s letter said the earlier delay was influenced by the judge leaving the court and a new judge taking over. It also said Mr Adam was not successfully summoned to later hearings and was searched for before arrest and international warrants were issued.
Mr Adam said the delay was not his fault and that his trial had been left inactive for years. He also relied on his family life in Ireland, where he lived with his partner and children, and described discrimination faced by Roma in the Czech Republic. The judgment says he was no longer pursuing a claim that he would be treated less favourably because of his ethnicity, though the court considered the country information for its relevance to his family-life objection.
The Minister argued that delay and fair-trial issues should generally be raised in the country where the trial would take place. The High Court accepted that the lapse of time alone could not establish a breach and said the Czech courts were better placed to assess the circumstances. It presumed that an effective remedy would be available there, noting that Mr Adam had not provided cogent evidence to displace that presumption.
The court also rejected his claim that surrender would unduly interfere with his private and family life. It concluded that surrender was not prohibited by Part 3 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 or by the EU Framework Decision. The judgment’s conclusion states that surrender is not prohibited; it does not itself set out a separate operative order directing the mechanics or date of transfer.