The High Court has ordered the surrender of a man under a French European arrest warrant after accepting fingerprint evidence on his identity and finding that a French guarantee of a retrial was sufficient under Irish law.
In a judgment delivered on 20 December 2006, Mr Justice Michael Peart said the warrant sought the respondent’s surrender to serve the remaining two years of a three-year sentence imposed in France in absentia. The warrant said one year spent in pre-trial detention was to be credited against the sentence.
The French warrant concerned convictions described in its translation as “swindle” and “forgery of administrative documents and trafficking therein”. It also covered theft offences, which the judge said corresponded to robbery under Irish law. He was satisfied that the offences met the minimum gravity requirement and that no statutory or Framework Decision ground prevented surrender.
The respondent disputed that he was the person named in the warrant, Juan Carlos Guzman Betancourt, a Venezuelan national. He said he was Alejandro Cuenca, born in Spain, and gave an account of his upbringing and lack of birth documentation. The judge noted that fingerprints taken from the respondent in Ireland matched prints attached to the French warrant, which had been compared by an expert. The respondent’s counsel questioned whether the French prints had been shown to belong to the person convicted, pointing to discrepancies in the French record and the absence of a photograph. The applicant relied on the expert comparison, which had not been contradicted by evidence from another fingerprint expert.
The judge accepted the fingerprint evidence and was satisfied that the respondent was the person sought. He also considered the warrant’s statement that the respondent had not known the date of his French trial and its guarantee that he could have a new trial examining the merits if he requested one. The judge held that this was sufficient under section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003, which requires a written undertaking providing for a retrial or an opportunity for one, notice of its time and place, and the person’s attendance.
The court therefore ordered surrender. The judgment records that the order was made; it does not report whether or when the surrender took place.