The defendant resisted extradition for a fraud prosecution brought 11 years after the relevant events which occurred in 1995. He had come to England in 2000, and the first he heard of the accusation was when he was arrested in September 2006. It was not suggested that he had deliberately fled the prosecution.
Held: The court assumed that the Polish courts had an appropriate abuse of process jurisdiction and would, in accordance with Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention, examine the question whether by reason of delay it would be unjust to allow the prosecution to proceed. Even so, before the court could rely on the proposition that the requesting state was best placed to examine the abuse of process issue, the requesting state, Walker J said, ‘must produce some evidence that there was good reason to think that there would be a basis for rejecting an abuse of process application.’ Keene LJ agreed: ‘Section 14 of the 2003 Act imposes a duty upon this court to make its own decision as to whether it would be unjust or oppressive to extradite someone by reason of the passage of time. The fact that the requesting state is a signatory to the ECHR is a relevant factor but I do not myself see it as being determinative of this issue in the absence of other evidence about the legal processes in that state. After all, states do not always comply with their Convention obligations in every case. It is a matter of record that many signatory states have been found to have breached Article 6 of that convention from time to time.’
Judges:
Walker J, Keene LJ
Citations:
[2006] EWHC 3227 (Admin)
Links:
Statutes:
Extradition Act 2003 14, European Convention on Human Rights 6
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Krzyzowski v Circuit Court In Gliwice, Poland Admn 23-Nov-2007
Extradition of the defendant to Poland was sought, the court saying he had fled his trial for burglaries in 1999. The defendant argued that his extradition would now be unfair.
Held: The judge was right to hold that his ruling of deliberate . .
Cited – Krzyzowski v Circuit Court In Gliwice, Poland Admn 23-Nov-2007
Extradition of the defendant to Poland was sought, the court saying he had fled his trial for burglaries in 1999. The defendant argued that his extradition would now be unfair.
Held: The judge was right to hold that his ruling of deliberate . .
Cited – Gomes v Trinidad and Tobago HL 29-Apr-2009
Each appellant challenged orders for their extradition, saying that the delay had been too prolonged, and that detention in Trinidad’s appalling jails would be an infringement of their human rights.
Held: The House had to consider its own . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Extradition, Human Rights
Updated: 06 December 2022; Ref: scu.249150