Edutanu v Iasi Court of Law & Ors

A European Arrest Warrant (EAW) with “merged” offences will be valid if the substantive offences for which sentence must be served are particularised.

The High Court was requested to consider the validity of EAWs in which the sentences for which the appellants' return were sought were merged with offences not properly particularised.

The four appeals addressed the differing approaches of the Divisional and Administrative Courts to Section 2(6)(b) of the Extradition Act 2003 requiring EAWs to contain "particulars of the conviction", and the principle of "specialty" prohibiting a person from being extradited for matters outside of those that form the extradition request.

The Issuing Judicial Authorities (IJA) argued that EAWs should be broadly interpreted and extradition may be enforced on a limited basis where the offence for which extradition is sought is identified in the EAW. They further argued that specialty arrangements adequately protect the requested person from being dealt with for offences not properly particularised.

Mr Jones QC (Edutanu, Barbu, Smadeci) and Mr Adam Wolstenholme (Pascariu) argued that reliance on specialty is not adequate and where a sentence relates to another conviction within the warrant, that conviction must also be particularised. This is particularly important where an indication has been given that the sentences cannot be disaggregated or the extradited person will serve a greater part of the stipulated sentence for the non-particularised offence.

Held:

1. To determine the validity of an EAW, the terms of a warrant must be read as a whole to establish whether the sentence to be served is both for particularised and unparticularised offences.

2. A conviction warrant will be valid if the sentence is merged with unparticularised offences, provided the underlying matter of substance is particularised in the EAW. The requested person must have sufficient details to understand what he has been convicted of and whether any bars to extradition apply.

3. Where an EAW is valid, the approach in Brodziak v Poland [2013] EWHC 3394 (Admin) enables extradition to be ordered on a limited basis, with reliance placed on Member States to act in accordance with their obligations in respect of specialty.

4. An EAW will not be valid where the requested person will serve a longer sentence for the offence not particularised. This will not be an issue where the unparticularised offences only aggravate the offences that have been particularised.

5. Of the four requested persons, only the EAW in Pascariu's case fell short of Section 2, as the unparticularised offence formed the greater part of the sentence in the EAW and there were insufficient specialty assurances before the Court in his case.

6. This follows the approach in Ministry of Justice (Romanian Judicial Authority) v Ernest Francisc Bohm [2013] EWHC 1171 (Admin); and distinguishes Flaviu-Daniel Presecan v Cluj-Napoca Court, Romania [2013] EWHC 1609 (Admin), and Brodziak.

Edutanu's appeal dismissed.

Appeals of the IJA's against Barbu and Smadeci allowed.

Appeal of the IJA against Pascariu dismissed.