The High Court has ordered the surrender of Neculai Hoamea to Romania to serve a seven-year prison sentence covering ten offences.
The European arrest warrant was issued by the Roman Court in March 2020. Hoamea's seven-year sentence was imposed on 8 February 2019 and became final on appeal on 13 September 2019. None of it had been served.
A central issue was whether every Romanian offence had an equivalent under Irish law. Because the seven-year term was an aggregate sentence which could not be broken into separate parts, surrender could not proceed unless all ten offences met that test, known as double criminality.
Hoamea accepted correspondence for nine offences but disputed one concerning a forest ranger identified as SVV. The Romanian first-instance court had acquitted him of that offence, but the appeal court later convicted him. Further information stated that Hoamea had threatened the ranger with killing, burning and decapitation.
Mr Justice Paul Burns held that the Irish court could not go behind the Romanian appeal court's factual findings. He found that the conduct corresponded to the Irish offence of making a threat to kill or cause serious harm.
Hoamea also objected to surrender because of Romanian prison conditions. He said that when previously detained in Bacau Prison he had shared a cramped and unhygienic cell and described infestations by lice, bed bugs and rats.
Romanian authorities responded that, if surrendered, he would initially be held in Bucharest's Rahova Penitentiary and most likely later in Bacau, with at least three square metres of personal space, proper sanitation, food, medical care and access to activities.
The court found no substantial grounds for believing Hoamea faced a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment. A separate allegation of police corruption was ultimately not pursued and, in any event, was not supported by sufficient objective evidence.
The objections were dismissed and surrender to Romania was ordered.