Salbut v Circuit Court Gliwice
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Ouseley |
| Judgment Date | 14 November 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] EWHC 4275 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | CO/4324/2014 |
| Date | 14 November 2014 |
[2014] EWHC 4275 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Ouseley
CO/4324/2014
Miss K O'Raghallaigh (instructed by Lansbury Worthington Solicitors) appeared on behalf of the Appellant
Miss H Hinton (instructed by the CPS Extradition Unit) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
This is an appeal against the decision of District Judge Goldspring at Westminster Magistrates' Court to order the extradition of the appellant to Poland on a mixed conviction and accusation warrant. The conviction component was for an offence committed in July of 2000 involving the acquisition of a mobile phone worth about £200 in today's currency through the use of a forged employment certificate.
The appellant pleaded guilty to the offence in his presence on an unknown date before 30 July 2007. On 30 July 2007 he was sentenced. He was not present but that was his choice. He was represented for that purpose. He was sentenced to an 18-month sentence which was suspended for 5 years, that is until the 30 July 2012. On 19 September 2011 the suspended sentence was activated because of breaches of the suspension conditions by the appellant through failing to inform the probation officer of his address and to keep in touch.
The EAW was issued on 11 February 2014. The accusation component of the warrant concerns an offence described as forgery, but it is a form of fraud, committed between February and December 2000. It is alleged to have involved a number of occasions on which the appellant with another acted as agent for a company in the collection of debts. They diverted the debts that they received to their own pocket rather than paying them to their employer. The total sum involved in that appears to be of the order of £2,000 to £3,000 at today's exchange rate.
The appellant said that he was imprisoned in 2005 and 2006 and at some point during that period the police questioned him about that offence but took no further steps in relation to it. The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) says that the appellant was served with a summons for trial in relation to that matter at the address he had given to them, which was his mother's address, and she collected the summons on 23 October 2008 undertaking to give it to the appellant. The appellant did not attend, and on 17 November 2008 the Polish court made an order for 3 months' preventive detention. What in fact that means is that the Polish court, in the absence of the appellant, issued what is an order comparable to a bench warrant, not backed for bail for a remand in custody, for an absent accused. The EAW in relation to that was issued on 11 February 2014.
The appellant came to the United Kingdom on 14 February 2008. He gave evidence to the effect that when he came he did so with the permission of his probation officer. Of course his probation officer would only have been policing the terms of his probation. He says, according to Miss O'Raghallaigh's recollection, that he remained in contact with her, the probation officer, until July 2008, when he says "the required period ended". Of course, the required period under the suspended sentence had scarcely begun. The reference to that period ending must be to a licence period associated with the prison term in respect of which he was released from prison in 2006.
The issues before the district judge included the question of whether the appellant was a fugitive such that he could not rely upon section 14 of the 2003 Act as a bar to extradition. The district judge's judgment in this respect does not deal separately, as it ought to have done, with whether the appellant was a fugitive in relation to either accusation or conviction offences, or both. The circumstances which apply are different, on the facts, with differing starting points.
The judge did not, as I read the judgment as a whole, forget that this was a mixed warrant, although describing it as a conviction warrant, but nonetheless he does not deal in his findings separately with the two sets of offences. This matters in part because the judge clearly took an adverse view of the credibility of the claimant and did so in part because of a section 10 Criminal Justice Act 1967 admission to the effect that he was present during his conviction and was given a suspended sentence, whereas his evidence to the judge was that he had been present to plead guilty but not present at the sentence. Of course that has nothing whatsoever to do with his position in relation to the accusation warrant. The position, even in relation to the conviction component, is not entirely satisfactory given that it is perfectly possible under Polish law to be present for conviction but absent for sentencing without being in any sense a fugitive. At all events, the judge found that the appellant was a fugitive in respect "of both charges," and therefore he would be unable to rely on the passage of time.
Miss O'Raghallaigh makes some cogent points about the reasoning or the expression of the reasoning in that decision, and it is clear that not all of it provides a ready answer to the issue in this appeal. I am, however, satisfied that the appellant had become a fugitive in relation to the conviction offence in these circumstances. By the time he had been sentenced and was subject to provisions which required him to keep in touch with the probation officer and let her know his whereabouts and had failed to do so, thereby failing to comply with the restrictions, he is properly described as unlawfully at large, but not before that point. I put it that way because I do not regard the phrase...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Daniel Zengota v The Circuit Court of Zielona Gora, Poland and Others
...v. Poland, a case that I decided and was upheld. I agree that he was in breach of his obligations and is a fugitive under the same test as in Salbut and as a fugitive he cannot rely on this bar and I therefore reject it in relation to all EAWs." 14 The District Judge also considered the app......
-
Tomasz Stryjecki v District Court in Lublin, Poland
...and deal with the offender for any breaches of its terms; in other words, beyond the reach of Polish justice (see Salbut v Circuit Court in Gliwice, Poland [2014] EWHC 4275 (Admin) at [8] per Ouseley J, approved by the Divisional Court in Wisniewski at [43] and following per Lloyd Jones LJ)......
-
Wojciech Wisniewski and Others v Regional Court of Wroclaw, Poland and Others
...the approach of Supperstone J. in Budzik v. Regional Court in Tarnow, Poland [2015] EWHC 2856 and that of Ouseley J. in Salbut v. Circuit Court in Gliwice [2014] EWHC 4275 (Admin.). The District Judge therefore found that the appellant was not entitled to rely on the passage of time bar. He......
-
Leendert Versluis v The Public Prosecutor's Office in Zwolle-Lelystad, the Netherlands
...that later cases, such as Pinto v Judicial Authorities of Portugal [2014] EWHC 1243 (Admin) and Salbut v Circuit Court in Glawice [2014] EWHC 4275 (Admin), had resulted in a confusion between the issues of whether a person is unlawfully at large within s 14(b) of the EA 2003, and the issu......