The High Court has adjourned a surrender application to give Polish authorities time to clarify what a man was alleged to have said in a 2011 threat case. The court said it could not decide whether that allegation corresponded to an offence under Irish law without the precise words allegedly used.
The Minister for Justice and Equality is seeking the man’s surrender to Poland under a European Arrest Warrant, so he can serve a sentence imposed by a district court in Szczecin in 2016. The warrant says he was present at the trial. The man’s solicitor filed an affidavit stating that he had received a suspended sentence and fine on that date for unrelated matters, and that he was serving a different sentence and was not present when the sentence in this case was imposed. The High Court said it was obliged to accept the warrant’s statement that he attended the trial. The respondent’s related rule-of-law objections were not pursued after that ruling.
The warrant describes four offences. The Minister and respondent disputed whether two of them corresponded to offences in Ireland. The court found correspondence established for an allegation of possessing 1.61 grams of amphetamine sulphate, concluding that the substance was covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. It also found the descriptions of forcing entry into a flat and assaulting an occupant corresponded to burglary and assault offences in Ireland. No correspondence argument was raised about that fourth offence.
For the remaining disputed offence, the warrant says the man threatened a woman with an offence against her health, causing justified fear. In response to a request for clarification, the issuing authority said the threat had to consist of physical injury. The judge directed the Minister to ask what the man was alleged to have said before ruling on correspondence.
The court rejected the respondent’s objection that the remaining sentence figure in the warrant was unclear. It treated a reference to “6 months” as a typographical error for six years, noting the stated aggregate sentence of six years and six months and the separate reference to five months and 27 days remaining. The judge said the issuing authority did not need to explain its calculation of the aggregate sentence.
The respondent also alleged that conditions in Szczecin prison, where he said he had previously been held, were inhuman or degrading. The court considered his solicitor’s account and a 2018 report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture concerning inspections of five Polish prisons in 2017. It concluded that the evidence did not establish a real risk of such treatment on surrender and dismissed that objection.
The court said it was not required to refuse surrender under sections 21A, 22, 23 or 24 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003. It did not make a final surrender order: the matter was adjourned briefly pending the requested clarification about the third offence.