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Temple Garden Chambers is a leading common law set based in London and The Hague.
With excellence from top to bottom Chambers provides a first class service in a number of different fields.
11/03/2025
Émilie Pottle and Sebastian Bates (instructed by Noam Almaz of Stokoe Partnership Solicitors) have secured the discharge of the appellant in Jirik v District Court of Prague, Czech Republic [2025] EWHC 506 (Admin).
The appellant had been sought by the Czech judicial authority by way of a warrant for his arrest to appear at a hearing at which the activation of his suspended sentence would be considered.
At first instance, the District Judge (Magistrates’ Courts) had held that the arrest warrant satisfied section 2 of the Extradition Act 2003 on the basis of Murin v District Court in Prague, Czech Republic [2018] EWHC 1532 (Admin); [2019] 1 WLR 1400. He had also held section 20 of the 2003 Act to be satisfied as, although the appellant had been convicted in Czechia in absentia and there had been no evidence of entitlement to a retrial or equivalent review on appeal in the event of extradition, the appellant had deliberately absented himself from his trial due to his ‘manifest lack of diligence’ in tracking the Czech proceedings.
On appeal, Bourne J accepted that the Czech judicial authority had not proven to the criminal standard that the appellant had either ‘actual knowledge that he could be convicted and sentenced in absentia’ or put himself beyond the jurisdiction of the Czech authorities ‘in a knowing and intelligent way with the result that for practical purposes a trial with them present would not be possible’, as the Supreme Court explained in Bertino v Public Prosecutor’s Office, Italy [2024] UKSC 9; [2024] 1 WLR 1483 would be necessary for section 20 to be satisfied in such circumstances in light of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Bourne J therefore discharged the appellant.
Bourne J also addressed Émilie’s and Sebastian’s submissions as to whether Murin, which heavily relied on the Council Framework Decision of 13 June 2002 on the European arrest warrant and the surrender procedures between Member States, should be followed in the wake of Brexit. Bourne J’s reasoning touches on the important constitutional issue of the relationship between domestic legislation—that is, the 2003 Act—and the United Kingdom’s treaty obligations in public international law, specifically those under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union.
