The High Court ordered the surrender of Marian-Constantin Ciobanica to Romania to serve a three-year prison sentence for theft, after rejecting two objections to the request.
Mr Justice Michael Peart delivered the judgment on 5 March 2008. The Romanian warrant sought his surrender to serve a sentence imposed on 5 March 2002. The court said the sentence remained unserved.
The respondent had been tried, convicted and sentenced in his absence. He argued that he had not received notice of the trial and that a written undertaking was therefore required to guarantee an opportunity for a retrial after surrender.
Romanian authorities told the Irish court that summonses had been sent to an address the respondent had given during the criminal investigation. A police affidavit said a summons for a trial date was received by his mother. The respondent said he had left Romania by then, had not received a subpoena and had not been told of one by his mother.
The judge found that the respondent had been notified in accordance with Romanian procedure because the summons was sent to the address he had provided and used for official purposes. The court said it did not need to establish that he actually knew what the notification contained. It ruled that no undertaking under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act was required and rejected that objection.
The respondent also argued that he had emigrated from Romania for family and work reasons, rather than to evade justice. He said he had left after attending court in 1999, when he was told the case would be postponed. The judge found he had not established that he did not flee with the intention of evading justice. The court considered that he knew he faced prosecution, having been stopped by police and questioned in court about the alleged offence.
The judge concluded that the respondent fell within section 10 of the Act, which covered a person sentenced to imprisonment who fled the issuing state before beginning to serve the sentence. Having found the statutory requirements for surrender met, the court ordered his surrender to Romania. The judgment records the order; it does not establish that the surrender was subsequently carried out.