Mladenov v Sofia Regional Prosecution Service, Bulgaria
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mitting J |
| Judgment Date | 29 January 2013 |
| Neutral Citation | [2013] EWHC 903 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 29 January 2013 |
| Docket Number | CO/11584/2012 |
Neutral Citation: [2013] EWHC 903 (Admin)
Court and Reference: Administrative Court
Judges:Mitting J
CO/11584/2012
Appearances:M Summers (instructed by Birmberg Peirce) for M; D Sternberg (instructed by the CPS) for the Bulgarian judicial authority.
Issue: Whether, on the information provided by the judicial authority, M's acts of disrespecting a police officer would constitute an equivalent public order offence in England.
Facts: While attending a police station in Bulgaria in 2005, M made certain forceful remarks to an officer, as a result of which he was prosecuted for =improper acts grossly violating the public order and expressing open disrespect for society'. His initial acquittal was overturned in his absence and his appeals failed. A conviction EAW was issued seeking his return to serve the remainder of his sentence of imprisonment. He argued, both before the District Judge and then on appeal to the High Court, that the warrant did not satisfy the requirement of double criminality under s65(3) of the Extradition Act 2003.
1 As extradition appeals go, this is an unusual one. As a result of an incident which took place in the Metropolitan Police Directorate in Sofia in Bulgaria on 16 and 17 September 2005, a European Arrest Warrant was issued against the appellant. The Arrest Warrant sets out very briefly what the nature of the incident was and the course that legal proceedings then took in Bulgaria. I will describe the incident in greater detail in due course. In the briefest of summaries, it was alleged that the appellant had been gratuitously offensive to an investigator called Grigorov, and had thereby offended his and public dignity, and so contravened a provision of the Bulgarian criminal code.
2 The appellant himself made a complaint about the incident, alleging that an act of discrimination had occurred. He originally succeeded, but the Court of Cassation eventually dismissed his claim.
3 He was then prosecuted. He appeared before the Sofia City Court and was acquitted on 13 March 2008. His acquittal was overturned in his absence on appeal by the appellate court of Sofia City Court who substituted for his acquittal a conviction and a sentence of 1 year's imprisonment. They did so on 10 July 2008.
4 The appellant then appealed to the Court of Cassation Bulgaria's Supreme Court. The appellate court's decision was quashed by the Court of Cassation on 5 March 2010 and the case remitted to the appellate court to redetermine. On 21 April 2010, the appellate court again convicted the appellant and imposed a sentence of 1 year's imprisonment upon him for the offence. He then appealed to the Court of Cassation. That court rejected his appeal against his conviction but allowed it against the sentence imposed and substituted a sentence of 6 months' imprisonment. That occurred on 24 March 2011. Those events are summarised, without all of the detail to which I have referred, on the face of the European Arrest Warrant.
5 Mr Summers, for the appellant, argued before the district judge and on appeal before me that the warrant was defective in that it inadequately specified the conduct giving rise to the offence and inadequately identified the manner in which the sentence had ultimately been imposed. For reasons which it is not necessary for me to set out at length, I do not accept those submissions, nor is it necessary for me to refer to the precise terms of the European Arrest Warrant to demonstrate why I do not.
6 The appellant, in fact, served the majority of his sentence. He did so, as the warrant itself discloses, between 25 July 2009 and 3 November 2009 when, as other information demonstrates, he was provisionally released. There remains 1 month and 25 days of the sentence of 6 months' imprisonment left to serve. This is a...
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Robert Lukaszewski v Polish Judicial Authority
...be trivialised. There has to be something which amounts to real emotional disturbance or upset." 14 In the case of Mladenov v Sofia Regional Prosecution Service, Bulgaria [2013] EWHC 903 (Admin), the matter was considered again by Mitting J at paragraph 19 where he said: "Ultimately, the qu......
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Wojciech Jan Mrowiec v Circuit Court Gliwice, Poland
...distress by words and conduct aimed at him by the Appellant. 11 In support of that contention, Mr Henley relies upon Mladenov v Sofia Regional Prosecution Service, Bulgaria [2013] EWHC 903 (Admin) in which Mitting J said that the words there complained of were the sort of thing that police ......