The High Court refused an application to surrender a man to Poland under a European arrest warrant, finding that he had not fled the country to avoid justice. The court discharged him from the proceedings.
The warrant sought his surrender to serve a 10-month prison sentence imposed after a conviction for driving while disqualified. The court found that the offence corresponded to driving without a valid licence under Irish law and that the sentence met the minimum gravity threshold. It found no other statutory basis to refuse surrender arose on the material before it.
The respondent argued that he had left Poland for Germany in early 2006 to find work and support his family, not to evade justice. He also disputed that he had been notified of the hearing at which the sentence was imposed. The Polish authorities said he had admitted the offence and agreed to a suspended sentence, a fine and costs; they said notices were collected by a person identified as his wife and that he later personally collected the decision activating the prison sentence. The respondent said the person named Ewa was his mother, and denied signing for the later decision.
The court noted inconsistencies in the respondent’s accounts of when he travelled between Poland, Germany and Ireland, and questioned whether his signature appeared on a postal receipt for the activation decision. It also considered an employer’s P60, which recorded employment in Ireland starting on 27 August 2007.
On the balance of probabilities, the judge accepted that the respondent left for Germany in early 2006 for economic reasons. The court also accepted that the employment record showed he was in Ireland by late August 2007, and that he had left Poland before he knew the sentence had been activated. The judge said “fleeing” for the relevant statutory provision implied an intention to avoid justice.
Because the court found that the respondent had not fled Poland in that sense, it did not decide whether an undertaking about a retrial would have been required given the disputed notifications and the respondent’s prior admission and agreement to a penalty. It refused the surrender order and discharged the respondent.