The High Court has ordered the surrender of Gaidis Brunins to Latvia under a European arrest warrant, after rejecting objections based on his health, detention conditions, delay and private and family life.
In a judgment delivered on 20 June 2022, Mr Justice Paul Burns said the warrant sought Brunins’s return to serve one year and 11 months of a sentence. The warrant related to offences described as intentional serious bodily injury and hooliganism. The court said the sentence arose from assault-type offences involving a knife, including injuries to one victim’s neck and a serious stomach stabbing to another.
Brunins told the court that he had received a combined sentence in Latvia in August 2004 for two offences committed in March that year. He said he was released in 2006 and that, after part of a suspended sentence was activated in August 2008, he was given 10 days to arrange his affairs before returning to prison. Instead, he travelled to Ireland. The judge found that he had deliberately left Latvia knowing he had to serve a sentence, and that his defence rights there had been respected.
The court considered medical reports concerning Brunins’s advanced cirrhosis, which his consultant said posed a threat to his life and required regular monitoring and access to specialist and emergency care. Latvia’s authorities provided information about healthcare in prison and said treatment could be arranged outside prison where required. At the hearing, Brunins’s side accepted that he would receive the medical treatment he needed if surrendered, but maintained concerns about unsanitary conditions.
Further information from Latvia described accommodation, hygiene and healthcare arrangements in its prisons. The judge said he was not satisfied there were substantial grounds to believe that detention conditions would expose Brunins to a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment, or breach his bodily integrity or other constitutional rights.
The judge also rejected the arguments based on delay and the right to private and family life. He acknowledged Brunins’s deteriorating health and his partner’s health problems, but found the circumstances were not truly exceptional enough to justify refusing surrender. The court concluded surrender was compatible with Ireland’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Constitution, and that surrender was not precluded under the 2003 Act.
The order under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 requires Brunins’s surrender to Latvia. The judgment does not state when the transfer will take place.