Dabkowski v District Court in Gorzow
Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
Judge | MR JUSTICE MITTING |
Judgment Date | 24 June 2010 |
Neutral Citation | [2010] EWHC 1712 (Admin) |
Date | 24 June 2010 |
Docket Number | CO/1465/2010 |
Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
[2010] EWHC 1712 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Before: Mr Justice Mitting
CO/1465/2010
The claimant appeared in person
Mr B Lloyd (instructed by the CPS) appeared on behalf of the Defendant
(As approved)
: Mr Tomasz Dabkowski appeals against the order of District Judge Purdy, made after a hearing on 27 January 2010, extraditing him to Poland. He appeals on the ground, under section 21 of the Extradition Act 2003, that his human rights would be infringed if he were to be returned to Poland. The two rights upon which he relies are Articles 2 and 3.
He is a former Polish police officer. He was sentenced to a term of imprisonment and is required by the Polish Judicial Authority to return to serve the remainder of his term. His complaint is that as a former police officer in Poland the Polish regulations for protecting him are inadequate and consequently he will be exposed to a risk to his life, or of at least serious ill-treatment at the hands of other inmates.
The difficulty with his argument, as with all arguments of that kind in relation to category 1 states, which are signatories to the European Convention of Human Rights, is that the Strasbourg Court looks to the country in which it is claimed that human rights will be infringed, if the individual is returned, to uphold those rights, and not to the country returning him. The authority for that proposition is KRS v United Kingdom [2008] ECHR 1781, 2 December 2008. The question in issue was whether it would be unlawful for the United Kingdom to return an individual, an asylum seeker, to Greece under the Dublin 2 Convention.
Two complainants were made, that Greece habitually returned people who claimed asylum to unsafe countries, or, in diplomatic shorthand, refouled them. The second complaint was that the conditions in which asylum seekers were kept and detained in Greece themselves infringed the individual's rights under Article 3 of the Convention.
It is necessary to set out quite a lengthy passage from the judgment to demonstrate what the court's opinion was on the second question, which is the only one relevant for the present purposes:
“The Court recalls in this connection that Greece, as a Contracting State has undertaken to abide by its Convention obligations and to secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined therein including those guaranteed by Article 3. In concrete terms, Greece is required to make the right of any returnee to lodge an application with this Court under Article 34 of the Convention (and request interim measures under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court) both practical and effective. In the absence of any proof to the contrary, it must be presumed that Greece will comply with that obligation in respect of returnees including the applicant. On that account, the applicant's complaints under Articles 3 and 13 of the Convention arising out of his possible expulsion to Iran should be the subject of a Rule 39 application lodged with the Court against Greece following his return there, and...
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