Argeseanu v District Court of Hunedoara and Petrosani (Romania)

A Part 1 European arrest warrant must contain accurate and sufficient particulars required by Extradition Act 2003, including the conduct, offence and relevant conviction. Material omissions or inaccuracies are fatal to the warrant to that extent. The court may consider further information supplied by the judicial authority, but the burden remains on that authority to establish validity. The court may sever an inadequately particularised offence from other offences which are sufficiently and accurately described. Extradition may therefore be ordered for some offences and refused for others. An appellate court should respect the district judge’s careful assessment of the warrant and the evidence unless legal or rationality error is shown.

The appellant challenged orders made by the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 4 October 2016 for his extradition to Romania under two conviction European arrest warrants. The warrants concerned convictions following trials at which he was said to have been present.

Permission to appeal was granted on the issue whether deficiencies in the warrants under section 2 of the Extradition Act 2003 rendered them irredeemably invalid. The appellant also sought permission to pursue challenges based on family life, delay, specialty, abuse of process and prison conditions. The central issue was whether the warrants could be clarified by analysis, further information or excision of inadequately particularised offences.

1. Section 2 compliance. The errors and omissions in both warrants were material. The statutory requirements, read with Article 8, require accurate particulars. A court cannot adopt an approach under which any information will suffice. Whether the warrant contains a curable lacuna or a wholesale failure depends on the particular facts, as explained in Alexander v France and Di Benedetto v Italy [2017] EWHC 1392 (Admin).
2. Further information and burden. The court may consider further information provided by the judicial authority when assessing validity. That information must itself supply the missing statutory particulars. The burden remains on the judicial authority. The requested person is not required to assemble material from other warrants or documents to repair an invalid warrant.
3. EAW 1. The warrant was invalid in relation to the additional 18-month sentence because neither the warrant nor the further information identified the offence, its legal classification, or the circumstances of its commission. It remained valid for the three assault offences carrying a separate six-month sentence. The defective part was properly severed.
4. EAW 2. The warrant failed to state the location of the older offence carrying the activated 18-month sentence. That omission was material under section 2(6)(b). The warrant remained valid for the separately particularised offence under Article 321(1) of the Romanian Penal Code. Again, the defective offence was severed.
5. The district judge had applied the principles in Edutanu v Romania [2016] EWHC 124 (Admin) correctly. His careful distinction between sufficiently particularised and defective offences was entitled to respect. The other grounds disclosed no arguable error: the Article 8, delay, specialty and abuse of process challenges failed, and the Article 3 challenge could not succeed in light of Mures v Romania [2016] EWHC 2786 (Admin).

• City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court: on 4 October 2016 ordered extradition to Romania under two European arrest warrants, while discharging the appellant in respect of specified defective offences.
• High Court (Administrative Court): permission was granted on the section 2 issue. The appeal was dismissed and the district judge’s orders were upheld.