The High Court ordered the surrender of Firea Macica to Spain under a European arrest warrant, but postponed the surrender while Macica serves a sentence in Ireland for a similar offence.
In a judgment delivered on 28 January 2021, Mr Justice Paul Burns dismissed objections to the request. The warrant sought Macica’s surrender to serve the remainder of a 15-month prison sentence imposed in Spain. The judgment does not state how much of that sentence remained to be served at the time of the Irish proceedings.
The Spanish warrant concerned an incident on a train on 22 September 2017. It described Macica pretending to lose balance and touching a female passenger’s vagina. Justice Burns said the conduct corresponded to sexual assault under Irish law. The respondent did not contest that correspondence at the hearing.
The main objection pursued was that surrender was barred because the Spanish sentence had been imposed in Macica’s absence and the requirements of section 45 of the European Arrest Warrant Act had not been met. The Spanish first-instance judgment was delivered on 7 March 2018, and an appeal was dismissed on 14 June 2018. The High Court sought further information about the appeal process.
That information said Macica had not attended the first-instance trial but had been represented by a lawyer and solicitor. Macica also appealed through the same legal representatives. The appeal was decided on the papers, with no physical appeal hearing, and the result was notified to Macica through those representatives.
Justice Burns found that Macica had been summoned in person, knew the first-instance hearing date, and had asked a lawyer to represent them. The lawyer continued to act through the appeal. The judge concluded that Macica’s absence was an informed decision not to take further personal part in the proceedings and that the defence rights were adequately protected. He therefore dismissed the section 45 objection.
A separate objection under section 22, concerning a risk of prosecution for other offences after surrender, was not seriously pursued. The judge found no cogent evidence to rebut the statutory presumption that Spain did not intend to proceed against Macica for another offence. Two other objections, including one about whether the conduct was an offence under Irish law, were not pursued at the hearing.
The court concluded surrender was not prohibited under the Act and made an order under section 16(1) for surrender to Spain. Because Macica was serving an Irish sentence for a similar offence, Justice Burns postponed surrender under section 18. The judgment does not specify when surrender would take place.