R Tibor v Judicial Authority Hungary
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Collins |
| Judgment Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 4396 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | CO/4714/2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
[2014] EWHC 4396 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Collins
CO/4714/2014
Miss Kate O'Raghallaigh appeared on behalf of the Appellant
Miss Hannah Hinton appeared on behalf of the Respondent
This is an appeal against a decision of District Judge Ingram, given on 8 October 2014, to order the appellant's extradition to Hungary pursuant to an accusation warrant alleging that he committed an offence described as misappropriation in April 2008. It is not necessary to go into any of the details since in this appeal only one point is taken. It is said that there has been a failure to comply with Section 2 (4) (b) of the Extradition Act 2003 in as much as there is no reference to — and indeed there appears to be no existence of — a domestic warrant or domestic legal decision which has to be referred to and indeed has to exist in order to justify the issuing of a European arrest warrant.
Section 2 (4) (b) of the Act follows the provisions of Article 8.1 (c) of the Framework Decision. So far as material, Section 2 provides:
"(2) A Part 1 warrant is an arrest warrant which is issued by a judicial authority of a category 1 territory and which contains —
(a) the statement referred to in sub-section (3) and the information referred to in sub-section (4) ….. "
and the information in question, so far as material, in sub-section (4) (b) is —
"(b) particulars of any other warrant issued in the category 1 territory for the person's arrest in respect of the offence."
The question as to what was meant by "any other warrant" was considered by the Supreme Court in Louca v Germany [2009] 1 WLR 2550. I should also refer specifically to Article 8.1 (c) which provides as follows:
"(1) The European arrest warrant shall contain the following information set out in accordance with the form contained in the Annex:
…..
(c) evidence of an enforceable judgment, an arrest warrant or any other enforceable judicial decision having the same effect, coming within the scope of Articles 1 and 2."
Article 1 defines the European arrest warrant as being —
"….. a judicial decision issued by a Member State with a view to the arrest and surrender ….. of a requested person, for the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution or executing a custodial sentence or detention order."
Article 2 defines the scope of the warrant, in effect, setting out a number of Framework offences and equally other offences which may be regarded as extraditable offences. There is no issue so far as this case is concerned but that the offending in question does fall within the scope of Articles 1 and 2.
In Louca, the Supreme Court had to decide whether the reference in Section 2 (4) (b), following Article 8, was to be regarded as another European arrest warrant or a domestic warrant. Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court decided that what it covered was a domestic judicial decision. At the end of his judgment, giving the only...
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