Wojciech Urban v Regional Court in Bialystok, Third Criminal Division, Republic of Poland
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Heather Williams |
| Judgment Date | 12 October 2022 |
| Neutral Citation | [2022] EWHC 2740 (Admin) |
| Docket Number | No. CO/4438/2022 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Year | 2022 |
[2022] EWHC 2740 (Admin)
Mrs Justice Heather Williams DBE
No. CO/4438/2022
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
KING'S BENCH DIVISION
ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
THE APPELLANT appeared in person (with an interpreter).
Mr S Hyman (instructed by CPS Extradition Unit) appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
I am asked by the appellant to adjourn the appeal which is due to be heard today. He is representing himself, assisted by an interpreter. His previous solicitors have recently come off the record. He says that they told him 10 days or two weeks ago that they were going to do so.
He identifies two reasons for the application. Firstly, in order to give him time to obtain a new solicitor to represent him. He says that he has spoken to “a few” solicitors in the last few days, but they said they did not have enough time to prepare for this hearing and so were not willing to represent him at that stage. The second reason is that on 7 October 2022 he submitted a request for a pardon to the President of the Republic of Poland, asking in the alternative to serve the rest of his sentence of imprisonment in the United Kingdom or for it to be suspended.
The application was opposed by Mr Hyam on behalf of the respondent. I am afraid I am going to refuse it for the reasons that I will identify.
Firstly, there has already been lengthy delay in this case. The District Judge's decision ordering extradition was made on 24 November 2020. Whilst at this stage of the hearing I am not going to take up time recapping the lengthy procedural history, it is fair to say that one reason, albeit not the only reason, why it has taken so long for this appeal to be heard is because there have been a number of occasions when the appellant has changed the grounds of appeal that he relies upon.
There is only one ground of appeal for which he was given permission and thus is before me today, namely that his extradition would be a disproportionate interference with the rights of him and his family that are guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”). In turn, this ground is based on the narrow proposition that the time he has spent in this country on bail with a curfew monitored by electronic tagging will count towards the sentence he has to serve in Poland. A letter dated 6 June 2022 from the respondent court indicates the difficulties with that submission. It is a reasonable inference that it is in light of that letter that his previous solicitors came off the record. In turn and in these circumstances I can have no particular confidence that other solicitors will be found to act for him. I asked Mr Urban to give me details of the solicitors he had contacted in the last few days, and I asked a second time as well in order to give him that opportunity. However, he was only able or willing to tell me in vague terms that he had “spoken to a few”. So, in short, the second reason for refusing the application is that I can have no confidence that adjourning the case for a period (in a context where there has already been considerable delay) will be likely to provide Mr Urban with legal representation. This is not a case, as the court sometimes sees, where a person has a solicitor in place but, for example, is waiting for funding to be granted for them to act. The request is only put forward in very general terms.
Thirdly, I consider that because the appeal is on the narrow basis that I have indicated, Mr Urban is not prejudiced in advancing the appeal himself in a way that he might be if he was without representation in a more complex case. This appeal does not, for example, depend on arguments about the case law; and in a helpful written document which he handed to me this morning, Mr Urban makes several points about the letter of 6 June 2022 and wider points about the proportionality of his extradition, which I will take into account.
Fourthly, I do not consider that the current request for a pardon affords a good reason to grant an adjournment. That document raises a number of matters, most of which go beyond the Article 8 issue that I am concerned with. The request was only made on 7 October 2022 when it could have been made significantly earlier, and I have no reason to suppose that it will be granted. With all due respect to the appellant, the matters set out in the request do not appear to be exceptional ones. In any event, those matters are primarily the concern of the Polish courts rather than this court, which is simply hearing the Article 8 appeal for which permission has been granted.
For these reasons, the adjournment is refused.
LATER
The appellant appeals from the order made by DJ Griffiths on 24 November 2020 ordering his extradition to Poland in respect of 12 offences pursuant to section 21(3) of the Extradition Act 2003 (“the 2003 Act”).
By order dated 18 May 2022 Choudhury J granted permission to appeal on a single ground, namely the compatibility of the appellant's extradition with his rights under Article 8 ECHR, as required by section 21(1) of the 2003 Act. The procedural history of this appeal is relatively complex and I will return to that topic.
Until recently the appellant was represented by counsel and solicitors. On 10 October 2022 I granted the application made by his solicitors, Lawrence & Co, to come off the record. They had informed the court that they were no longer in a position to put forward a positive argument on behalf of the appellant and had ceased to act for him.
Mr Urban has appeared in person today, assisted by a Polish interpreter. At the outset of the hearing he applied for an adjournment. I refused the adjournment and gave my reasons for doing so at that stage of the hearing.
Before me today I have a bundle of documents prepared by the respondent and the respondent's skeleton argument. No skeleton argument was submitted by the appellant, but I permitted Mr Urban to refer to documents which he produced for the first time this morning. I will summarise the contents of those documents in due course.
The extradition request
The respondent seeks the appellant's extradition pursuant to a European arrest warrant issued on 18 June 2020 (“the EAW”). It was issued under the Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA of 13 June 2022 (“the FD EAW”). The EAW remains the operative surrender instrument as the appellant was arrested on 8 July 2020, before the implementation completion day in relation to the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. It was certified by the National Crime Agency on 7 July 2020.
The EAW is a conviction warrant. It seeks the appellant's committal to prison to serve a term of detention of three years. Upon issue, the entirety of this term remained outstanding.
The enforceable judgment is that of the District Court in Bialystok promulgated on 5 October 2016 which took effect on 10 July 2017. The judgment related to 15 offences. At the extradition hearing the respondent conceded that three of the offences (numbers 11, 13 and 15) were not extradition offences within the meaning of section 65(2) of the 2003 Act. As such, the District Judge discharged the appellant in relation to those three offences.
The remaining 12 offences were summarised by the District Judge in her judgment. Offence number 1, committed between 30 November 2010 and 30 June 2011, concerned six instances of dishonestly making representations in the course of business which the requested person knew to be false. The representations concerned an intention to pay for construction materials. The appellant also falsified his signature. Financial loss was caused to a named individual. The other offences followed a similar structure. Offence number 2 related to making a false representation on 31 May 2011 as regards an intention to pay for construction materials. Offence 3 was committed on 15 September 2011 and concerned a false representation of an intention to pay for electrical services. Offence 4 was committed between 10 and 26 October 2011 and concerned making a false representation in the course of business of an intention to pay for playground equipment. Offence 5, also committed on October 2011, concerned masking a false representation to pay for ready-mixed concrete. Offence 6, committed on 16 November 20111, concerned a false representation to pay for services. Offence 7, committed between 25 November 2011 and 9 December 2011, concerned a false representation to pay for specified goods purchased via a deferred payment mechanism. Offence 8, committed between 3 and 12 December 2011 concerned making a false representation to pay for building services and falsifying a signature. Offence 9, committed on 6 December 2011, concerned making a false representation of an intention to pay for building services. Offence 10...
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