The High Court has ordered the surrender of Romeo Rostas to France to serve a three-year prison sentence arising from two break-ins at a car breakers’ yard in Taradeau.
French authorities sought Rostas under a European arrest warrant issued in April 2021. He was arrested in Ireland the following month on foot of a Schengen alert.
The warrant concerned offences committed at Delta Auto in February 2011. French information said property taken included car batteries, copper cable, radiators, mechanical parts, wheels and a catalytic converter. Rostas’s DNA was found on a blood trace on fencing cut to gain entry. He admitted participation in the 22 February offence but denied involvement in the earlier break-in.
A French court initially released Rostas after finding a procedural defect. The prosecutor appealed, and the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal later imposed three years’ imprisonment. After Rostas objected to that decision, a further hearing was arranged for January 2015. He did not attend, and the sentence was confirmed.
Rostas disputed the French account. In affidavits, he said he had not received notice of the relevant hearing and had not instructed a lawyer to challenge the earlier judgment. He maintained that he would have attended had he known about an outstanding court date.
Mr Justice Burns accepted the French authorities’ account instead. The European arrest warrant and subsequent information stated that Rostas had been personally summoned, and the French appeal judgment itself recorded that he had been notified of the three-year sentence, immediately objected and was then summoned for the rehearing.
The High Court also found that the conduct corresponded to Irish offences including burglary, theft and criminal damage, despite questioning the warrant’s characterisation of the conduct as organised or armed robbery.
The court held that the statutory safeguards governing convictions in a person’s absence had been satisfied. Rostas’s objection was dismissed and his surrender to France was ordered.