Presecan v Cluj-Napoca Court, Romania

A European arrest warrant must satisfy the mandatory requirements of section 2 of the Extradition Act 2003, read purposively and as a whole. Where the sentence to be served is a merged sentence arising from more than one conviction, the warrant must provide particulars of each relevant conviction. It is insufficient that the sentence for one offence is identifiable or that extradition is sought only in relation to that offence. The court cannot rely on severance or trust in the requesting state where the warrant leaves a real possibility that the unparticularised conviction affects the sentence or extradition decision.

The appellant appealed against an order made by District Judge Nicholas Evans on 27 March 2013 for his extradition to Romania under a European arrest warrant. The warrant concerned a two-year sentence for commercial burglary, merged with 381 days remaining from an earlier three-year-and-six-month sentence imposed following a 2004 conviction. The appellant argued that the warrant was invalid because it did not provide particulars of the earlier conviction as required by section 2(6)(b) of the Extradition Act 2003. The central issue was whether the warrant could be treated as valid for the burglary sentence alone.

1. The appeal was allowed and the order for extradition was quashed.
2. Section 2 of the Extradition Act 2003 imposes mandatory requirements. They must nevertheless be read and applied purposively, having regard to the Framework Decision and the need to avoid an unduly narrow approach. That purposive approach does not permit the court to disregard missing particulars required by section 2(6)(b).
3. Following the approach in Echimov v Court of Babadag Romania [2011] EWHC 864 (Admin), the warrant must be read as a whole. Its box C described the remaining sentence as a merged sentence relating to both the 2004 and 2006 offending. The warrant therefore required particulars of the earlier conviction as well as the burglary conviction.
4. The reasoning in Ministry of Justice (Romanian Judicial Authority) v Bohm [2013] EWHC 1171 (Admin) supported the conclusion that a warrant is invalid where the sentence sought derives from an unparticularised earlier offence. The possibility that the earlier conviction might affect imprisonment after a later conviction was sufficient to make the omission material.
5. It was unsatisfactory to rely on trust in the Romanian authorities or to assume that the sentence could be severed. The appellant also needed the particulars to assess whether the earlier offence was an extradition offence or whether another bar to extradition applied. The mandatory provisions were not satisfied, so the warrant was invalid.

The judgment records that District Judge Nicholas Evans ordered extradition on 27 March 2013. The Administrative Court allowed the appeal and quashed that order.