The High Court refused an application to surrender a man to Poland under two European arrest warrants, ruling that section 22 of the European Arrest Warrant Act required refusal. The court ordered his release under section 16(8) of the Act.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Michael Peart on 2 November 2007, concerned separate Polish warrants for different offences. One, dated 21 November 2006, sought the respondent’s surrender for prosecution over an alleged offence described in the warrant as “sexual exploitation of children and child pornography”. The judgment said the offence carried a maximum Polish sentence of 12 years.
The second warrant, dated 28 November 2006, concerned an assault offence. The respondent had been convicted of that offence in December 2003 and sentenced to one year and four months, none of which had been served, the court said.
The warrants were endorsed for execution on 19 September 2007, and the respondent was arrested on 3 October. His counsel argued that endorsing both the original Polish warrants and their English translations made the arrest invalid. The judge rejected that submission, saying the extra endorsements did not make the arrest unlawful. He was satisfied that the respondent was the person named in the two warrants and that no other statutory grounds considered by the court barred surrender.
The decisive objection concerned section 22, which governs whether a surrendered person may be proceeded against in the issuing state for other offences committed before surrender. The respondent argued that because there were two warrants, each offence was an “other offence” in relation to the separate surrender application for the other warrant. He submitted that section 22 therefore prevented surrender on either warrant.
The applicant argued that refusing surrender on this basis would frustrate the purpose of the European arrest warrant system. The judge said the two offences could have been included in one warrant, but held that the wording of section 22 was clear and could not be interpreted in a way that contradicted it. He found that the presumption that Poland did not intend to pursue other offences did not resolve the issue, given the contents of both warrants and their requests for surrender.
The court also rejected the respondent’s objection based on his private and family life, and declined to revisit an earlier ruling on another point. It did not address further objections that were awaiting appeals in the Supreme Court. Because section 22 required refusal of surrender, the judge ordered the respondent’s release.