Kuznecovas, R (on the application of) v Prosecutor General Office of the Republic of Lithuania

For the purposes of extradition, a person may be an accused person even where the requesting state uses a pre-trial interview procedure. The relevant question is whether the proposed interview forms part of proceedings directed towards trial, rather than being merely an investigative request for information. A double-jeopardy objection does not arise where an investigation was suspended and later properly revived. Any procedural irregularity in the requesting state’s earlier investigation is ordinarily a matter for that state’s courts. The appeal was therefore dismissed.

Jurijus Kuznecovas appealed against District Judge Tubbs’s decision of 30 September 2011 ordering his extradition to Lithuania under a European arrest warrant. He faced two public-order charges.

The appellant argued that the requesting authority was not a judicial authority, that he was a suspect rather than an accused person under section 2(3) of the Extradition Act, and that extradition was barred by the double-jeopardy rule in section 12. He also raised an issue concerning an earlier investigation that had been suspended and later revived.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The challenge to the status of the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office as a judicial authority could not succeed because that issue had been definitively settled by the Supreme Court in the appeal of Mr Assange.
2. Section 2(3) of the Extradition Act did not prevent extradition. The governing distinction, identified in Asztalos v Szekszard City Court, Hungary [2010] EWHC 237, was between a proposed interview forming part of pre-trial proceedings and a request by local police or prosecutors merely to speak to a person during an investigation. The European arrest warrant showed that the appellant fell within the first category.
3. The section 12 double-jeopardy objection failed. Following Turansky [2008] ECR 1-11039, the bar did not apply where a police investigation had been suspended and was subsequently properly revived.
4. Any procedural irregularity in the earlier investigation, insofar as it had significance under Lithuanian criminal procedure, was a matter for the Lithuanian courts rather than the extradition court.
5. The appellant’s solicitors and counsel were permitted to come off the record. The court proceeded on the basis that the relevant extension of time had enabled the appeal to be heard, and ordered a detailed assessment of costs.

• High Court (Administrative Court): appeal against District Judge Tubbs’s decision of 30 September 2011 dismissed.