Amajane (aka Adam Mansori) v Amtsgericht Tiergarten, Federal Republic of Germany

On an application for bail in extradition proceedings, the court must consider the matter afresh and assess the present evidence and risk. An accusation warrant creates a presumption in favour of bail, but that presumption may be displaced where there are substantial grounds for believing that the applicant would fail to surrender despite proposed conditions.

The assessment is prospective and evidence-based. The court need not make concrete findings of fact at the bail stage, but may consider troubling conduct, the potential sentence, identity issues, apparent dishonesty, lack of sufficient ties and the adequacy of proposed conditions. Bail should be reconsidered where a later fact-finding hearing may materially alter the evidential position, although bail must be determined on the evidence currently available.

The applicant was wanted for extradition to Germany under a replacement European arrest warrant concerning an alleged serious assault. He had been arrested and released, then re-arrested and held in custody. Two district judges had refused bail, and a further application had not been entertained because no sufficient material change of circumstances was shown.

He applied to the Administrative Court under section 22(1A) of the Criminal Justice Act 1967. The central issue was whether the presumption in favour of bail was displaced by substantial grounds for believing that he would fail to surrender notwithstanding proposed conditions.

1. Application refused. The court considered the bail question afresh, as described in Tighe [2013] EWHC 3313 (Admin), rather than treating the application as a conventional appeal.
2. Because the warrant was an accusation warrant, there was a presumption in favour of bail. The question was whether substantial grounds existed to believe that the applicant would fail to surrender if released, notwithstanding the proposed security, curfew, electronic monitoring, residence, reporting and passport conditions.
3. The presumption was displaced. Relevant considerations included the prospect of a substantial custodial sentence, the applicant’s use of aliases and different dates of birth, the circumstances in which he hid when re-arrested, and evidence that his brother gave an apparently untruthful account to the police. The applicant’s lack of convictions, previous compliance, known address and willingness to surrender his passport did not sufficiently answer those concerns.
4. The court was not making concrete findings of fact for the extradition proceedings. It was assessing present risk on the evidence available for the bail application. The future district judge, acting as the primary fact-finding tribunal, might later be in a materially different position to reconsider bail after findings concerning credibility and other factual issues.
5. That prospect of later reconsideration did not cause the refusal or amount to a deferral of the decision. The application was refused because the present evidence established substantial grounds for believing that the applicant would fail to surrender despite the proposed conditions.

The judgment does not describe an appeal from an earlier judicial decision. It records earlier refusals of bail by two district judges and a later application that was not entertained for want of a sufficient material change of circumstances.