KN v Sokolov District Court, Czech Republic
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Fordham |
| Judgment Date | 05 June 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 1462 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 05 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No: CO/3864/2019 |
[2020] EWHC 1462 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Fordham
Case No: CO/3864/2019
Mark Smith for the Appellant
Hearing date: 4 June 2020
Judgment as delivered in open court at the hearing
Approved Judgment
I direct that no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
THE HON. Mr Justice Fordham
Introduction
This renewed application for permission to appeal was a telephone conference hearing. It and its start time were published in the cause list with contact details available to anyone who wished to participate. I heard oral submissions just as I would have done in the court room and I am satisfied of the following: this constituted a hearing in open court; the open justice principle has been secured; no party has been prejudiced; and insofar as there has been any restriction on a right or interest it is justified as necessary and proportionate. At the hearing an application was made for an anonymity order, and I made a provisional order for anonymity. I am going to continue that order for reasons I will give later. The appellant is wanted for extradition to the Czech Republic in conjunction with two EAWs (European Arrest Warrants), each of which is a conviction warrant. One of the warrants involves a custodial sentence of 18 months. The other involves a custodial sentence of 10 months, suspended and not yet activated. As the respondent has accepted in written submissions, the district judge made a factual error in referring to the 10-month sentence as already having been activated. It is also common ground that the currently-suspended 10-month sentence is properly the subject of extradition action and the case of Murin v Czech Republic [2018] EWHC 1532 (Admin) was referred to. The appellant relied on Amended Grounds of Appeal dated 14 November 2019, supplemented by oral submissions, and accompanying further evidence. I decided to consider all the written and oral submissions, and all of the evidence in the case including the fresh material, to evaluate on the substantive legal merits whether there was any reasonably arguable ground. Having done so, I have reached the same conclusion as did Eady J on the papers, namely that there is no reasonably arguable ground of appeal in this case. The fresh evidence is incapable of being ‘decisive’ and I will formally refuse both permission to appeal and permission to rely on it.
Article 3
The essence of the appellant's submissions in reliance on ECHR article 3, as presented and as I saw it, involved three steps. (1) On the evidence, the appellant is an individual in need of protection in custody, there being a proper evidential basis for his assertion that he has previously acted as a police informant which would place him in personal physical peril upon incarceration in the Czech Republic. (2) On the evidence, whilst the Czech authorities would be able to protect his personal safety, there is a proper evidential basis for the conclusion that they would refuse to do so in the light of their formal response in these proceedings, which takes the clear position the appellant has never been a police informant. (3) On the evidence, even if (2) were wrong, and even if the Czech authorities did act to protect his personal safety from threats during incarceration, that would involve protective custody of a nature which calls for specific further information before a conclusion on article 3-compatibility of extradition can properly be arrived at.
The district judge found against the appellant as to step (1). The appellant gave oral evidence that, during a sentence of imprisonment in 2010, he had encountered violence by reason of the fact that he had previously been a police informant. His evidence was that he had acted as ‘a police informant’ in respect of local drug gangs over a course of more than a decade, suffering violence and threats as a result. His case was that both he and members of his family had suffered acts of violence and threats after his release. He sought to adduce, very late, some untranslated social media messages from 2019, which the district judge declined to admit into evidence, but which the appellant was permitted to refer to in his oral evidence. His evidence about those 2019 social media messages was, as the judge recorded, that they were of a menacing nature and supported his evidence relating to events concerning a criminal gang at that time. The judge had, and relied on, further information from a judge in the Czech Republic which stated that the appellant “is and never has been a police informant” which the judge said “it could not have been clearer”. The judge concluded that the judicial authority “has stated unequivocally that [the appellant] is not and has not been a police informant”. He concluded that the appellant “has not been able to show that he would be a vulnerable inmate”.
The position before me is as follows. The appellant has put before me translations of the social media messages from 2019 which he had described to the judge, from their non-admitted and un-translated format, in his oral evidence. Those messages as translated do indeed contain content of a menacing nature and support the description of the relevant conduct of the criminal gang at the relevant time. They do not, however, support the contention that threats were being levelled at the appellant or his family on the basis of him being a police informant. There is a hint in one of those messages, and a question in another of them, but it does not provide evidential support for that conclusion. The appellant has also put before me translations of social media messages from 2017. On the face of it, these are communications between the appellant and the person who he had named as one of the two police officers to which he provided information over a period of time. I accept that, on the face of them, those translated messages from 2017 indicate the ongoing provision to the police of information about criminal activity.
On the basis of that material, Mr Smith submits that the respondent has missed the point in focusing on whether the appellant has been a “police informant”, and whether there has ever been “a formal arrangement with him to provide information”. In further information dated 9 December 2019 from the district court it is recorded that the named police officer has stated that the appellant “had never been a police informant and that there had never been a formal arrangement with him to provide information”. That, says Mr Smith, misses the point. It does not deny that information had been supplied, as the social media messages support. The question of imperilment in incarceration will not turn on technical issues as to the definition of “police informant”, still less on the existence or otherwise of any “formal arrangement”. I have some sympathy with the respondent in relation to this matter. The point had and has continued consistently to be put forward, by and on behalf of the appellant, on the basis that he was a “police informant”; not that he had ‘provided information’. It is unsurprising that the responses have focused on the status of “police informant”. I think it right, however, to put that debate to one side and look at the substance of the position, as it is on the evidence before me. I accept that there was an evidential basis for the contention that the appellant had provided information to the police over a period of time, that he did so to a named police officer who he was able accurately to identify, and that he was telling the truth about that matter. I accept, at least as reasonably arguable, that that brings into question whether the article 3 issue could be disposed of – at least as things now stand – by reference to the judicial authority having “stated unequivocally that [the appellant] is not and has not been a police informant”.
That, however, only takes the appellant so far. His case is that he is known and perceived to have been a police informant, that this has imperilled himself and his family, that there was past ill-treatment in incarceration in 2010 and thereafter, and that he is at risk of facing future violence and threats, as a known and perceived police informant. There is no evidential support in the materials before me for that wider contention. Whether he provided information to the police in the past is one thing. Whether he has suffered and stands to suffer threats and violence at the hands of those who know or perceive this is what really...
To continue reading
Request your trial