The High Court has ordered the surrender of Jarosław Liwiński to Poland to face retrial on two alleged drug trafficking offences said to have been committed in 2007.
In a judgment delivered on 12 March 2021, Mr Justice Paul Burns dismissed Mr Liwiński’s objection to surrender. The court found that surrender was not prohibited under the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 or any other provision of the Act, and made an order under section 16.
Mr Liwiński’s objection was that he had already been prosecuted for the same offences and had spent about two and a half years in custody. In affidavits, he said he had been detained from June 2007 to December 2009, that a four-and-a-half-year sentence had been imposed, and that he believed it may later have been rescinded. He maintained that account after the Polish issuing judicial authority supplied further information.
The court sought clarification from that authority through several exchanges. The information it ultimately received said Mr Liwiński had been found guilty of three offences in 2013 and given a cumulative four-and-a-half-year sentence. On appeal, the decision on the two offences covered by the European arrest warrant was set aside and sent back to the lower court; the conviction on a third, drugs-related offence was upheld, with six months imposed.
The issuing authority said detention from 26 August to 27 November 2009 was credited against the sentence for the third offence. It also said that earlier periods of custody, from June 2007 to February 2008 and from February 2008 to August 2009, related to two robbery sentences. Mr Liwiński disputed that account.
Justice Burns accepted the issuing authority’s information under the mutual-trust basis of the European arrest warrant system. He was not satisfied that there was a reason to refuse surrender for the retrial. The judge also said the statutory presumption that Poland would comply with the Framework Decision, including respecting fundamental rights, had not been rebutted.
The judgment records that the warrant was issued on 15 September 2016 and endorsed by the High Court on 13 March 2017. Mr Liwiński was arrested and brought before the court on 9 March 2018. The order concerns surrender to face retrial; it does not determine his guilt on the two offences.