British
and Irish Legal Information Institute
Freely Available British and Irish Public Legal Information
[Home] [Databases] [World Law] [Multidatabase Search] [Help] [Feedback]
England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions >> Judicial Authority of Italy v Bitraj [2016] EWHC 3736 (Admin) (23 December 2016)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2016/3736.html
Cite as: [2016] EWHC 3736 (Admin)
[New search] [Printable RTF version] [Help]
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Strand London WC2A 2LL |
||
B e f o r e :
____________________
| JUDICIAL AUTHORITY OF ITALY | Appellant | |
| v | ||
| BITRAJ | Respondent |
____________________
Trading as DTI
8th Floor, 165 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2DY
Tel No: 020 7404 1400 Fax No: 020 7404 1424
(Official Shorthand Writers to the Court)
Mr J Swain (instructed by Coomber Rich) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
____________________
HTML VERSION OF JUDGMENT (APPROVED)
Crown Copyright ©
- .1. MR JUSTICE FRASER: This is an appeal against a decision to grant bail in relation to Mr Sulo Bitraj.
- .2. Mr Bitraj is wanted in Italy in order to continue to serve a total of, it is said, over 5 years and 7 months' imprisonment following convictions for seven serious offences. Those offences are the subject of three separate European Arrest Warrants. I am going to come onto their details in a moment. The offences were committed between 1999 and 2011. They include one for violent robbery, possession with intent to supply a large quantity of cocaine, possession of a loaded firearm and forgery offences.
- .3. Mr Bitraj made two applications for bail but on 21 December 2016 he made a third bail application to District Judge Rose. The reason for the third application was that there was an offer of increased security because the security that had been available prior to that application was £20,000. It was increased to £30,000 and this was a sufficient change of circumstances to enable a third application to be made.
- .4. Mr Bitraj is an Albanian national. The conditions that were imposed on bail by District Judge Rose (also granted it) were the security of £30,000; the surrender his Albanian passport if returned by the Home Office; not to apply for or possess any travel documents; residence at his home address (it is said that that is between midnight and 7.00 am, although Mr Bitraj's counsel says actually it was from 7.00 pm to 7.00 am but the difference between those two conditions is not material); a reporting condition to Croydon police station daily; and not to enter any port or international airport.
- .5. The District Judge also noted an expectation that Mr Bitraj's fiancée would surrender her travel documents as well but, in my judgment, that cannot be described as a bail condition relevant to Mr Bitraj's bail, although that may have arisen simply by way of a discussion and/or submission during the bail application before him.
- .6. The appellant, who is represented by the judicial authority, the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Torino in Italy, appeals against the decision to grant bail under section 11A of the Bail Amendment Act 1993. This hearing is a rehearing and not a review of the decision and I have the power to remand Mr Bitraj in custody under section 1(9) of the Bail Amendment Act 1993.
- .7. I am going to deal with the chronology. The offences in respect of which Mr Bitraj has in fact been convicted are grouped into three European Arrest Warrants. They have been identified in the following way and I adopt the nomenclature used in the appellant's skeleton but they are not in chronological order. All the European Arrest Warrants were issued on the same day, which is 6 June 2016. The EAW identified as EAW 1 relates to three offences committed in April 2011. Two of them are for the possession of these forged credit cards by the respondent, who I have said is an Albanian national, and an accomplice. One of these cards was used to purchase electronic goods. The third offence, which Mr Bitraj committed alone, concerns the possession with intent to supply a quarter of a kilogram of cocaine.
- .8. I am going to deal against each group of the offences, on what I have been told by Mr Swain for Mr Bitraj is in fact his case on each of them. He was present at his trial and he was sentenced to 5 years 4 months and 10 days' imprisonment. It is said that he served 1 year and 3 months and in fact was formally released; in other words, he has fully complied with the sentence imposed upon him. That is a matter which obviously the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Turin in Italy does not certainly at the moment agree with, because they are of the view that Mr Bitraj still has to serve 3 years 2 months and 19 days unexpired sentence.
- .9. In respect of European Arrest Warrant 2, that, as with European Arrest Warrant 1, is also a conviction warrant. It relates to a conviction for two offences involving firearms. The first concerns the possession a 9mm Beretta handgun with an altered barrel and a modified magazine containing four bullets. The second offence is one of handling stolen goods, but the stolen goods were indeed the firearm.
- .10. The respondent was not present at that trial but was represented under a power of attorney and pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to 1 year and 4 months' imprisonment. The Italian authority is of the view that 11 months and 6 days remain to be served, Mr Bitraj's case on that is he admits the conviction but he maintains that he has served his sentence in its entirety.
- .11. EAW 3 relates to much older offences and they go back to January 1999. Those offences are aggravated robbery and assault. The respondent and other people chased a victim in their van, made him fall off his bicycle, beat him repeatedly with an iron bar and stole his bag which contained cheques and insurance dossiers.
- .12. The respondent was not present at that trial but again was represented by a lawyer under a special power of attorney and pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to 1 year 6 months' imprisonment. None of that has been served at all.
- .13. The case on EAW 3 for Mr Bitraj is that he says he was only 12 at that time and was living in Albania and therefore that, effectively, cannot be him and it must relate to somebody else.
- .14. He also, however, has convictions for offences in England and Wales. In June 2006, he pleaded guilty to two offences which were committed in July 2015 of possessing articles for use in fraud, namely an Italian driving licence and Italian travel documents. He was sentenced to 20 weeks' imprisonment. He was given no separate penalty for a third offence of driving while uninsured.
- .15. He is now currently subject, as from September 2016, to immigration proceedings. He has been served with a notice of liability for removal. Because the EAWs are conviction warrants he has no right to bail and the purpose of the EAW scheme is to ensure expeditious extradition proceedings between Member States. Mr Bitraj is currently contesting those extradition proceedings.
- .16. Mr Swain has put the case very compellingly for Mr Bitraj and it is effectively as follows. Mr Bitraj has very strong connections with this jurisdiction. There is a substantial sum available as security from his fiancée with whom he is in a committed relationship. Were it not for these proceedings he would in fact be married already. He should be married. That was certainly his plan. His passport is with the Home Office and a large quantity of documents have been provided to the court showing the following. He has a stable address; that he complied with his licence conditions for the sentence for which he was convicted in the UK; that he is engaging with and instructing his solicitors in relation to his application for a residence card. The letter to his solicitors from immigration authorities is in September 2016. It is also said that he has recently been given a national insurance number; that his fiancée has in fact had a national insurance number since August 2016. She has added him as a director to one of her companies in September 2016, and the relevant Companies House documents are provided to underpin that submission. It is said that applied for, and been given, a unique taxpayer reference number by HMRC and that he
- .17. registered as a sole trader under the Construction Industry Scheme with HMRC in November 2016. He has a large quantity of character references from different people and it has been said, and I have been shown, a document from the Home Office that having investigated whether his intended marriage was a sham, the Home Office has taken the view that no investigation is necessary. Effectively the conclusion is that that marriage is not a sham, and it is therefore said he is someone with strong ties in the UK and he has a substantial disincentive to abscond. He has also, it is said, fully engaged in the extradition proceedings and it is hampering his conduct of these proceedings that he cannot liaise with his lawyers in Italy because he speaks fluent Italian and at the moment it is all having to been done by his fiancée who does not speak fluent Italian, and this is all obviously causing him difficulties.
- .18. It is also said in his defence to the suggestion that he might abscond, that he had ample opportunity to attempt to do that when the police came to arrest him at his house because the police car broke down and he was allowed to use his own vehicle to help the police to jump start their vehicle to take him to the police station and that on that occasion he did not abscond.
- .19. I should say although that is a colourful submission, I do not pay an enormous amount of attention to it, because absconding in the presence of two police officers who may or may not have trouble starting or using their motor vehicle is not quite the same as deciding to abscond in the absence of personal contact with the police.
- .20. There are three major points of concern that I have which means I am going to allow this appeal and I am going to refuse Mr Bitraj bail. The three main points of concern are as follows. Although is it a sizeable sum of money that is proffered by way of security, those funds have come almost substantially or entirely from his friends and his fiancée. That should be borne in mind when one considers who will actually suffer the burden of confiscation of those funds were he to abscond. The burden would not be borne by him personally, it would be borne by his friends and his fiancée. I consider in view of the recent ties with the UK, which although they are said to be strong are really very recent indeed, are not sufficiently close that they would be a factor in him deciding not to abscond.
- .21. That leads into the second point of major concern, which is that these offences cover a wide range of criminal activity and over a wide period of time. They are in fact exceptionally serious. They involve violence, robbery, sizeable drug possession, possession of a 9mm Beretta handgun and forgery. In those circumstances, I hope it is really rather obvious that the temptation to abscond would be considerably high given that the case by the Public Prosecutor's Office is that this individual, Mr Bitraj, still has to serve a period of outstanding imprisonment which is measured in years, not months.
- .22. In those circumstances, the second concern I have is that the nature of the offences and the duration of the prison sentence said to be outstanding are considerable and very serious.
- .23. My third concern is that the nature of the offences committed in the UK whilst he has been here, namely possession of a forged Italian driving licence and forged Italian travel documents, show that this particular person, Mr Bitraj, not only has access to sizeable funds but he has access either to the expertise or to the contacts who are available to provide forged travel documents.
- .24. In those circumstances, therefore, the fact that his Albanian passport is with the Home Office simply will not be an impediment in any respect to his obtaining documents which, even if forged, might assist him or could assist him or probably would assist him in being used to travel and further abscond from justice.
- .25. In all those circumstances, therefore, in my judgment, the appeal brought today against the decision of District Judge Rose to grant conditional bail is allowed and I deny Mr Bitraj bail. He will remain in custody.