Antonia Ilia v Appeal Court in Athens (Greece) and Another

JurisdictionEngland & Wales
JudgeLord Justice Underhill,Lady Justice Rafferty
Judgment Date14 July 2014
Neutral Citation[2014] EWHC 2372 (Admin)
CourtQueen's Bench Division (Administrative Court)
Date14 July 2014
Docket NumberCase No: CO/653/2012

[2014] EWHC 2372 (Admin)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

Royal Courts of Justice

Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

Before:

Lady Justice Rafferty DBE

and

Lord Justice Underhill

Case No: CO/653/2012

Between:
Antonia Ilia
Appellant
and
Appeal Court in Athens (Greece)
Appeal Court in Piraeus (Greece)
Respondents

Mr Joe Middleton (instructed by Christian Khan) (at the hearing of 26.3.13); Ms Rachel Kapila (written submissions); and Mr Ben Cooper (both the latter instructed by Faradays) for the Appellant

Mr James Stansfeld (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service) for the Respondents

Hearing dates: 26 March 2013 and 4 June 2014

Lord Justice Underhill

INTRODUCTION

1

This appeal was initially concerned with five European Arrest Warrants issued by the Greek judicial authorities (being the public prosecutors in Athens and Piraeus) seeking the arrest of Antonia Ilia. The Appellant was until her dismissal for misconduct in July 2005 a Judge of the First Instance Court in Athens. A few days before her dismissal she came to this country and settled under a false identity. She was arrested at her home in Sussex on 15 May 2011. The extradition proceedings at first instance were protracted, partly though not only because the Appellant initially lied about her identity, a circumstance which led to her being denied bail until 6 December 2012, meaning that she was held on remand for no less than nineteen months. They have also, regrettably, been very protracted on appeal; but I will come back to that.

2

I annex a formal description of the five warrants, but I will refer to them in the judgment simply as EAW 1–5. EAW 1–4 are conviction warrants. All the convictions concern misconduct related to the Appellant's role as a judge, for which she was sentenced in her absence to varying terms of imprisonment. For reasons which will appear I need not give any details about them. The position about EAW 5, which was issued by the public prosecutor at the Appeal Court in Athens, is complicated. I will not attempt to summarise it at this stage beyond saying that it seeks the Appellant's extradition partly in order to serve a sentence already imposed, in her absence, but partly in order to stand trial on a number of other charges. Again (with one apparent exception) both the convictions and the outstanding charges relate to the Appellant's conduct as a judge.

3

The application for extradition on the basis of the five warrants was heard by District Judge Purdy in the City of Westminster Magistrates Court on 5 December 2011. I need not at this stage set out the issues argued before him; but the Appellant's overarching case was that the charges against her were trumped up and that she was being persecuted because of her left-wing political opinions and because during her judicial career she had stood up against corruption and pro-establishment bias among her colleagues. The District Judge reserved his decision. On 16 January 2012 he made an extradition order on the basis of all five warrants.

4

The Appellant appealed. Among other grounds she sought to rely on evidence which had not been before the District Judge, including expert reports (dated 8 October and 2 November 2012) from a Greek lawyer, Mr George Pyromallis.

5

The appeal was initially due to come before the Court on 7 November 2012 but it was adjourned without a hearing at the Appellant's request. It came before Hallett LJ and Collins J on 13 December 2012, but they adjourned it further. The adjournments reflected two developments. First, the Appellant produced an e-mail, and subsequently a report, from Mr Pyromallis taking two further points, namely:

(a) that it was apparent from a recent decision of the Court of Appeal in Athens involving a co-defendant of the Appellant (of which the text was not yet available) that the offences to which the "accusation" element in EAW 5 relate were time-barred; and

(b) that the nineteen months which the Appellant had served on remand meant that she would have to serve only a minimal period if she were extradited on the conviction warrants.

Secondly, it was said by counsel that the Appellant was as a result of recent legislation in Greece entitled to commute the terms of imprisonment imposed on her into financial penalties, which would mean – if she were also granted time to pay – that she would no longer, in relation to the conviction matters, face a prison sentence for which she could be extradited. The adjournment by Hallett LJ and Collins J was in order to allow the Crown Prosecution Service to obtain further information from the judicial authorities in Greece on those points.

6

The case came before us on 26 March 2013. We heard submissions from Mr Joe Middleton for the Appellant and Mr James Stansfeld for the CPS. Most of the issues argued before the District Judge remained live but Mr Middleton also relied on two of the matters identified at para. 5 above. First, he said that the commutation process had now commenced and that extradition should not proceed in the meantime. Secondly, the written decision of the Court of Appeal in Athens was now available and he submitted that it was necessary that he should have the opportunity to adduce further evidence from Mr Pyromallis about its implications. We granted the latter request – albeit with some reluctance in view of the previous adjournments – and set a timetable for the lodging of the evidence in question and for further written submissions. We made it clear that we expected to be able to determine the appeal without the need for a further hearing.

7

The sequence of submissions thereafter was as follows:

(1) Mr Pyromallis provided a further report dated 18 April 2013, which was lodged together with a witness statement from Ms Vogiatzi, the Appellant's lawyer in Greece. Mr Middleton lodged written submissions addressing this material on 3 May. The submissions exhibited a short e-mail from Mr Pyromallis dated 29 April.

(2) The Appellant's solicitors asked Mr Pyromallis some questions arising out of his report. He gave his answers in a supplementary report dated 13 May. This was lodged under cover of a further note from Mr Middleton dated 15 May.

(3) Mr Stansfeld lodged a response dated 19 May. He also lodged a further note dated 3 June dealing with a query from the Court.

(4) As the process of commutation of sentence proceeded in Greece, the Court was updated from time to time by the Appellant, including by a Note from Mr Middleton dated 26 June. On 31 July we directed that all information on this aspect must be lodged by 23 August, with leave to the CPS to respond by 6 September; and that the Court intended to proceed to a decision as soon as possible thereafter.

(5) On 7 August Mr Stansfeld lodged a note with the Court notifying it that warrants EAW 1 and EAW 2 had been withdrawn because the sentences in question had been commuted and giving the CPS's position as regards the potential commutation of the sentences underlying EAW 3 and EAW 4.

(6) On 21 August new solicitors instructed by the Appellant, Messrs Faradays, applied for an extension of the deadline of 23 August, which was granted. On 23 September they lodged submissions from fresh counsel, Ms Rachel Kapila. As regards EAW 5 these (a) notified the Court (though the fact had been mentioned already) that an appeal against the Appellant's conviction would be heard by the Court of Appeal in Athens on 25 September and (b) sought a renewed oral hearing on the accusation matters at which Mr Pyromallis could give oral evidence.

(7) Mr Stansfeld responded on 27 September, exhibiting further information dated 3 July from Ms Zairi of the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Appeal in Athens.

(8) On 8 October permission was given to the parties to make submissions about the hearing in Athens which had been due to take place on 25 September. Ms Kapila provided submissions accordingly, which attached a report to the Appellant from Ms Vogiatzi.

(9) Shortly afterwards Faradays lodged a witness statement from a Mr Nicolapoulos, dated 12 October: Mr Nicolapoulos is a lawyer instructed by the Appellant, alongside Ms Vogiatzi, to act for her in Greece. He was also one of her co-defendants in the proceedings underlying EAW 5, though he was acquitted. His statement goes considerably beyond recounting what had happened at the hearing on 25 September.

(10) Mr Stansfeld responded to Ms Kapila's submissions on 17 October.

8

So long a series of written submissions was not ideal and meant that, even without the further delay to which I refer below, the interval since the original hearing was much longer than we originally intended. But it was occasioned by developments in the Greek courts which could not fairly be ignored and which, as will appear, have considerably narrowed the issues and had the potential to do so still more.

9

On 20 November 2013 we circulated draft judgments, in accordance with the usual procedure, in which we decided that the Appellant should be extradited on the accusation, but not the conviction, elements of EAW 5. In his comments on the draft Mr Stansfeld submitted that an order expressed in that way was not open to the Court, but he also drew our attention to the then very recent decision of this Court in Brodziak v Circuit Court of Poland [2013] EWHC 3394 (Admin), which he submitted addressed the difficulty which had led us to decide against extradition on the conviction element: I explain this at para. 36 below. This required further written submissions, which were delayed as a result of problems in both camps (see para. 37 below).

10

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