England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2A 2LL
		20 December 2010

1. MR JUSTICE OWEN: This is an appeal under section 26(1) of the Extradition Act 2003 against an extradition order made in relation to the appellant, Sandija Kudzevica, in the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 11 August 2010.

1. The Extradition order was made pursuant to a European arrest warrant issued by the Riga Circuit Court, Latvia, the respondent judicial authority, on 7 October 2008. The European arrest warrant was based on the judgment of the judicial authority which on 25 June 2007 imposed a sentence of eight years' imprisonment on the appellant in relation to four offences equivalent to conspiracy to purchase and supply Class A drugs and possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply in September/October 2004. The appellant was remanded in custody by the judicial authority on 12 October 2004, but released on bail on 8 December 2004. It follows that seven years and two months of her sentence remain to be served.
2. On 28 April 2009, the warrant was certified by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and executed at 6 am on 29 August 2010, the appellant being arrested at her home in Portsmouth. On the following day, 30 April, she was produced at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court, and at that hearing the district judge found there had been compliance with section 4 of the 2003 Act, namely that she had been brought before an appropriate judge as soon as was practicable. The full extradition hearing took place on 23 June, judgment being handed down on 11 August.
3. Three points were taken before the district judge at the substantive hearing. First, it was submitted that the appellant had not been brought before the appropriate judge as soon as was practicable, and the district judge was, therefore, invited to revisit the decision that had been made at the initial hearing. Secondly, it was contended that extradition would be in breach of the Article 3 rights and, thirdly, that extradition would breach the appellant's Article 8 rights.
4. By her grounds of appeal, the appellant contends that the district judge erred in law in his conclusions on each of those issues. As to the question of whether it was open to the district judge at the substantive hearing to revisit the decision made at the preliminary stage of the proceedings, as recently as last Thursday, 16 December, that issue was considered by the divisional court in Stunjuk v The Circuit Court in Catavici.
5. I have a copy of a Lawtel extract, helpfully provided by Mr Atlee, and it appears that there is not as yet a neutral citation for the report. But the Divisional Court confirmed the decision by the district judge that he had no power to reopen section 4 issues after the end of the initial hearing. As a result, that point was no longer pursued by Mr Atlee.
6. The second issue was the Article 3 challenge. Her challenge is based upon her evidence as to the physical conditions in the Latvia prisons, based upon the two months that she had spent in custody and, secondly, upon her fear of being the subject of attack in prison as a consequence of it being public knowledge that she had agreed to act as an informant for the police.
7. Two points arise. First, Mr Justice Mitting has recently held in a sequence of cases, see in particular Dabkowski v The District Court in Gorzow [2010] EWHC 1712 (Admin) and Klimas v Prosecutor General's Office of Lithuania [2010] EWHC 2076 (Admin). At paragraph 7 in Dabkowski:

"Extradition of an individual to a Category 1 state, which is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, for those reasons cannot, in principle, cause the United Kingdom to be in breach of its obligations under Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention, so as to prohibit extradition under section 21."

8. Or, as he put it in Klimas, paragraph 13:

"Accordingly, and as a matter of principle, I would hold as I did in Jan Rot that when prison conditions in a Convention category 1 state are raised as an obstacle to extradition, the district judge need not, save in wholly extraordinary circumstances in which the constitutional order of the requesting state has been upset - for example by a military coup or violent revolution - examine the question at all."

Those conclusions were based upon his analysis of a decision of the Strasbourg court in KRS v The United Kingdom [2008] ECHR 1781. That is an analysis which I respectfully agree with.

9. But secondly, and in any event, there is material before me produced by the judicial authority in response to a request from the Crown Prosecution Service which sets out details of the protective measures that can be taken with regard to vulnerable individuals in prison in Latvia. I have no reason to believe that such measures will not be taken if necessary for the protection of the appellant. At paragraph 3 of his judgment, the district judge said this:

"The complaints, concerns and fears that Miss Kudzevica puts forward are based on her experiences in a Latvian prison from October 2004 to December 2004, i.e. two months. I have read reports on Latvian prison conditions by the US Department of State. On the evidence before me, I do not find that Miss Kudzevica has proved to me that there is now a real risk of ill treatment to her."

That is a conclusion with which I respectfully agree. I should add that in this context I have also taken account of the decision in Sorokins v Kraslava Regional Court of First Instance (Latvia) [2010] All ER(D) at 179. I, therefore, reject that limb of the appeal.

10. Finally, there is the challenge under Article 8. The appellant is a woman of 30 who has been living in England since 2008. She is a single parent with a daughter, now three years of age. Since the appellant's arrest, the daughter has been looked after by the appellant's mother who now lives in Scotland. The effect of extradition upon the appellant's daughter does not need to be spelt out, but the application of Article 8 in the context of extradition proceedings was considered by the Supreme Court in Norris v The Government of the United States of America (No 2) [2010] 2 A.C. at page 9. The holding is in the following terms:

"Dismissing the appeal that although there could be no absolute rule of absent exceptional circumstances that any interference with Article 8 rights as a consequence of extradition would be proportionate, there was a compelling public interest in extradition as part of the process for ensuring the prevention of disorder and crime and, since the likelihood of interference with family life was inherent in the process of extradition, the consequences of interference with those rights had to be exceptionally serious before they could outweigh the public interest in giving effect to request for extradition, so as to make the extradition of the individual disproportionate. That when considering the proportionality of a particular extradition the judge could take account of the relative gravity of the offence and the effect of extradition on members of the extraditee's family. That the offence of obstructing justice with which the defendant remained charged were, notwithstanding the withdrawal of the price fixing charge, offences of significant gravity. That the consequences of extradition on the defendant's close family ties and dependencies, the severity of which had increased by reason of the delay brought about by his asserting his legal rights in regard to the price fixing charge, were not so excessive as to render that extradition disproportionate to the public interest in the prevention of crime which it served and that, accordingly, the decision to extradite the defendant would be upheld."

11. The district judge found that the circumstances of the case did not come near the unusually and exceptionally compelling circumstances envisaged in Norris and, as a result, rejected the Article 8 challenge. That is a conclusion that, in my judgment, cannot be faulted. As Lord Phillips observed in Norris, extradition will inevitably have serious consequences on the family life of the extraditee.
12. Whilst one has the greatest of sympathy, in particular for the daughter in this case, I am not persuaded that there are any grounds on which the extradition order could properly be set aside. It follows that this appeal would be dismissed.
13. Mr Atlee, Mr Grandison, thank you very much for your assistance.
14. MR GRANDISON: Thank you, my Lord.