Patraucean v Romania

Under section 4 of the Extradition Act 2003, the warrant to be provided after arrest is the arrest warrant issued by the requesting state, rather than necessarily its English translation. Failure to provide a complete translation therefore does not itself establish non-compliance with section 4(2).

Section 4 issues belong to the initial hearing. Once that stage has passed, the extradition hearing does not ordinarily provide a second opportunity to reopen them. A defect attracting the discretionary power to discharge must also be shown to justify discharge. A remediable copying error causing no prejudice is unlikely to do so.

The appellant appealed against District Judge Zani’s decision of 6 June 2013 ordering his extradition to Romania. At the initial hearing, the English translation of the European arrest warrant supplied to the appellant’s solicitor was missing two pages. The missing pages were obtained and supplied at the resumed hearing before the extradition hearing took place.

The appellant argued that section 4(2) of the Extradition Act 2003 required service of a complete English translation and that the District Judge should have reopened the issue and discharged him under section 4(4). The central issues were the meaning of “warrant”, the likely exercise of the discretionary discharge power, and whether a section 4 issue could be revisited at the extradition hearing.

1. The appeal was dismissed. The District Judge was right not to reopen the section 4 issue at the extradition hearing.

2. Section 4(2) requires a copy of the warrant to be given to the arrested person. Read with section 2, “warrant” means the arrest warrant issued by the judicial authority in the requesting state. It does not mean the translation supplied by that state. The appellant had received the Romanian warrant.

3. The translation requirements in article 8 of the Framework Decision assist the executing authorities and the court. Article 11 requires the requested person to be informed of the warrant and its contents, with interpretation and legal assistance where necessary. Those provisions do not require that the requested person receive a copy of the warrant in English.

4. Even if section 4(2) had not been complied with, section 4(4) conferred a discretion, not an obligation, to discharge. The omission was an apparent photocopying error. The missing pages were promptly obtained, and there was no demonstrated prejudice. Discharge would have been highly unlikely.

5. The statutory scheme assigns section 4 matters to the initial hearing. The extradition hearing addresses the later statutory issues and does not ordinarily permit a second determination of an issue assigned to the initial hearing. The approach in Nur and Public Prosecutor Van der Valk was applied by Stanczyk v Circuit Court Katowice, Poland, and the court accepted that reasoning. Section 4 decisions may, in a proper case, be examined by judicial review or habeas corpus.

6. Ballan did not undermine that conclusion. It concerned judicial review of purported consent, rather than a statutory extradition appeal concerning section 4. The usual order for detailed assessment of the appellant’s public funds was made.

• High Court (Administrative Court): The appeal from District Judge Zani’s extradition decision of 6 June 2013 was dismissed.