Navadunskis, R (on the application of) v The Serious Organised Crime Agency

Part 1 of the Extradition Act 2003 provides the comprehensive procedure for challenging extradition, including human rights objections. Judicial review after that procedure has ended is available only in a very rare case involving a genuinely supervening event or knowledge that could not reasonably have been raised earlier.

Evidence or a human rights argument available before the extradition hearing cannot ordinarily support a later judicial review. In a Part 1 case, exceptional representations should be made urgently to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which may advise an application for judicial review. The claim was dismissed because the proposed evidence was obtainable earlier and no valid statutory appeal existed.

The claimant, a Lithuanian citizen, was ordered by a District Judge to be extradited to Lithuania under a European arrest warrant. He failed to serve his notice of appeal in time, so no properly constituted statutory appeal arose.

Before surrender, he sought judicial review based on a later expert report concerning his human rights. He accepted that the report could have been obtained before the extradition hearing. The central issue was whether judicial review remained available after the statutory extradition procedures had ended, and whether the absence of a valid appeal affected the possible use of CPR 52.17.

1. The application for judicial review was dismissed. Part 1 of the Extradition Act 2003 is designed to simplify and accelerate extradition and to prevent successive collateral challenges after the statutory procedures have been exhausted.

2. Sections 21 and 34 provide important safeguards and restrict challenges to the statutory appeal route. Nevertheless, the statutory scheme must allow a very rare further human rights consideration where a substantial supervening event, or supervening knowledge, arises after the statutory procedures and could not reasonably have been acquired earlier.

3. A human rights issue, report or disclosure which could have been raised at the extradition hearing or on a valid appeal cannot ordinarily be introduced by judicial review later. Permitting such a challenge would frustrate the purpose and provisions of Part 1. The expert report relied on here was obtainable earlier and therefore was not supervening.

4. Where a valid appeal has run its course, CPR 52.17 may provide a route to reopen it in wholly exceptional circumstances. It could not assist here because no properly constituted appeal had existed.

5. In a Part 1 case, representations about exceptional supervening human rights circumstances should be addressed to SOCA, the public authority arranging surrender. SOCA is not thereby made the human rights decision-maker, but should advise the person to seek urgent permission and relief from the court.

6. The injunction preventing extradition was discharged. The ten-day period for extradition ran from 22 May 2009.

The judgment records that a District Judge ordered extradition. A notice of appeal was not served in time, so no properly constituted statutory appeal existed. The present proceedings were a first-instance judicial review application.