The High Court dismissed Ronan Hughes’s objection to surrender to the UK, finding that the European arrest warrant alleged the offences occurred within UK territory. The court then ordered his surrender under section 16 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003.
The June 12, 2020 judgment concerns a UK request to prosecute Hughes on 40 charges: 39 counts of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. The warrant alleges that the manslaughter charges relate to 39 Vietnamese nationals found dead in a trailer in the UK in October 2019. It alleges that Hughes and others conspired to facilitate unlawful entry into the UK using commercial trailers.
Hughes’s sole objection at the hearing was that surrender was barred by section 44 of the 2003 Act. His counsel argued that the offences were committed outside the UK and that Irish law did not permit prosecution for the same acts when committed outside Ireland. A separate objection about the UK’s Territorial Waters Jurisdiction Act had been withdrawn.
The Minister for Justice and Equality argued that section 44 did not apply because the alleged offences occurred in the UK. The court said the section required two conditions to be met before surrender was prohibited: the offence must have been committed, or alleged to have been committed, outside the issuing state; and the relevant acts must not constitute an offence under Irish law by virtue of having taken place outside Ireland.
The judge said the court would generally rely on the location stated in the warrant, except where there was obvious ambiguity or manifest error. The judgment records that the warrant alleged the victims died after the vessel entered UK territorial waters. It also described alleged conspiracy-related activity in the UK, including use of premises, transport through Purfleet port and meetings among alleged conspirators.
The court held that both the conspiracy and manslaughter charges were alleged to have occurred in the UK. It therefore found Hughes had not met the first requirement of section 44 and dismissed the objection. The court did not need to decide whether the second requirement was satisfied. It added that, even if the deaths in UK territorial waters were treated as occurring outside the UK, the acts would appear to constitute offences under Irish law if they occurred in Irish territorial waters.
The judgment states that the court was satisfied surrender was not prohibited under Part 3 of the Act and ordered surrender to the UK. The order concerns transfer for prosecution; the judgment does not determine the truth of the charges.