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	England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions >> Sobierajski v Regional Court In Lodz [2017] EWHC 1001 (Admin) (17 March 2017) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2017/1001.html Cite as: [2017] EWHC 1001 (Admin)

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

		Royal Courts of Justice Strand London WC2A 2LL
		17 March 2017

1. MR JUSTICE MITTING: The extradition of the appellant is sought on a conviction European arrest warrant issued by a judge of the Regional Court in Lodz on 29 September 2015 to serve the unserved part - two years nine months and thirteen days - of a sentence of five years' imprisonment imposed by the same court on 12 January 2004, which became final in December 2004, for multiple offences of fraud committed against different banks in 1999 and 2000 whereby he obtained the zloty equivalent of about £8,000.
2. The European arrest warrant was certified by the National Crime Agency on 29 October 2015. The appellant was arrested on 21 March 2016. After a contested hearing, his extradition was ordered by District Judge Nina Tempia in a reserved judgment on 14 September 2016. He appeals on one ground only, with the permission of Mrs Justice Lang, that his extradition would infringe the right to respect for family and private life of him and, more importantly, of his 17-year old daughter. The district judge found that the appellant was released part-way through his prison sentence in October 2004, aware that he could be summoned to serve the remainder of the sentence. Mr Hawkes, who appears for him today, has satisfied me that in fact he spent a prolonged period on remand and he may well not have served any part of his sentence as a sentenced prisoner. The dates even so do not coincide precisely. If the sentence became final in December 2004, it is a little difficult to understand how he could have started to serve it in October 2004. But none of this ultimately matters. All that eventually matters is that he does have two years nine months and thirteen days to serve.
3. The appellant came to the United Kingdom in 2004. He has lived with his daughter, now aged 17, since 2009 or 2010 in a rented flat since July 2014. His former wife (his daughter's mother) has severe problems of her own, and all accept that it is inconceivable that his daughter could return, were he extradited to Poland, to live with her remaining family there. She was and is studying for A levels and hopes to go to university beginning this autumn. She was assessed by social workers as a resilient young woman with a strong emotional attachment to the appellant. The district judge had a report from Dr Todd, who also gave oral evidence, which put that attachment in context: because of the disturbed background and despite her resilience in everyday life, her emotional attachment was nevertheless a powerful one. The district judge also had the report of social workers employed by Lincolnshire County Council who described her as a resilient and independent young woman.
4. The district judge's conclusions were as follows. She was sure that the appellant was a fugitive, a decision which is not challenged. She also accepted the evidence of the social workers that the daughter was an independent and adaptable woman. There is further evidence that they had no concerns for her well being if her father were to be extradited. She nevertheless faced up to the evidence of Dr Todd and expressly accepted that the daughter was emotionally still dependent on her father. She noted however that in evidence Dr Todd accepted that she was resilient and mature and could handle practical things even though she required her father's emotional support.
5. The district judge carried out what is, to my mind, an impeccable Celinski balancing exercise. She considered in an admittedly brief but nevertheless sufficient passage that the factors weighing in favour of extradition outweighed the two factors which counted against it, namely the fact that the appellant had been in the United Kingdom since 2004, had been working since then and was still now working, and the fact that his daughter was reliant on her father and that his extradition would result in the loss of her primary secure and stable attachment/relationship and that she might lose confidence and develop anxiety-related problems. In my judgment she faced up squarely to the single serious obstacle to extradition in this case and reached a conclusion which cannot be said to be wrong.
6. Mr Hawkes submits that the judge failed expressly to take into account the delay which had occurred since the offence and the responsibility of the requesting judicial authority for that delay. He points out, as is uncontroversial, that the appellant had visited Poland on four occasions up to and including 2011 and had applied to the Polish Consulate for a passport for his daughter in 2007 and 2012 and for himself in February 2014. It was that, it seems, which triggered the realisation by the requesting judicial authority that he was in England. Mr Hawkes submits that even so there was a delay of eighteen months between that trigger and the issue of the warrant.
7. The reality is that although the district judge did not expressly address delay as one of the factors counting against extradition, had she done so it could have made little or no difference. The delay benefitted (if that is the right word) the daughter's position in that her relationship with her father during her more vulnerable years of childhood was preserved. It is not a factor which the appellant can personally pray in aid to any significant extent when he was the cause of the principal delay of failing to fulfill his obligations under Polish law by notifying the Polish authorities of his whereabouts and failing to turn up when told to do so to serve the remainder of his sentence.
8. The social services' report recommends that any removal of the appellant to Poland is delayed until his daughter has taken her exams and is ready to go to or perhaps settled in the university of her choice, assuming, as they and I do, that she succeeds in her exams. This seems to me to be a powerful point. It is in nobody's interests that the daughter's academic success should be jeopardised by the immediate removal of her father. That he should be removed to serve the sentence imposed upon him in 2004 is fully justified for the reasons carefully set out by the district judge in her reserved judgment.
9. Save that the district judge did not expressly address the immediate future of the daughter, her judgment, it seems to me, is impeccable and not open to criticism. If I were to decide that the omission to address the daughter's immediate position vitiated her conclusion that extradition should occur, then I could and would determine that this appeal should be allowed and the Polish authorities should be in effect invited to re-issue the European arrest warrant when his daughter had taken her exams and gone to the university of her choice. It is not necessary to put the requesting judicial authority to that trouble. Their warrant is well founded. The judgment of the district judge was not wrong. And the daughter's position can be protected by means available to me which Miss Pottle accepts can legitimately be deployed.
10. I intend - for the reasons that I have given - to dismiss this appeal but to direct that the order dismissing the appeal is not drawn up and sealed until 2 October 2017. Time for the extradition to take place will then start to run fourteen days after that order is drawn up and sealed.