AC-2024-LON-0003395 - [2025] EWHC 2795 (Admin)

Mindful of the strength of the presumption of compliance and the cogency of the evidence required to rebut it, I start by examining the foreseeable consequences of sending the person to the receiving state, bearing in mind the general situation and the personal circumstances of the person. I begin with the evidence about prison conditions in Latvia at a general and systemic level. In my judgment the evidence establishes that the informal prisoner hierarchy is persistent and long standing. However, pressure on Latvia from the CPT and the Strasbourg court is beginning to yield results.

The pressure is to bring the informal hierarchy to an end, break the power of the informal leaders, i.e. the smotriaschije and the blatnyje, and end the degrading treatment of the lowest caste members, the untouchables, kreisie or levyje. The culture is starting to change, partly by natural evolution and partly because the measures alluded to in the latest government response are having an effect. The change is slow; there is much still to do. It is likely that the situation of the worst off prisoners will slowly improve, relative to the rest.

I accept the authority of Vascenkovs for the proposition that the Latvian prison regime was generally article 3 compliant when that case was decided and that the presumption of compliance was not at that stage rebutted, notwithstanding the 2023 CPT report which was considered by Swift J, along with the government’s response to it. Vascenkovs was not a kreisie (levyje) case; the caste system was not relied on, though inter-prisoner violence was considered. Nor was it a case involving drug addiction and treatment. The warrant was an accusation warrant in respect of alleged benefit fraud.

At that time, there was already case law in the European Court of Human Rights establishing that an individual had suffered treatment in violation of article 3 arising from conditions in detention (viz. the alleged police informer in DF v. Latvia). That finding in itself came nowhere near rebutting the presumption of compliance for extradition purposes, as the domestic case law shows. The same is true of the finding in D. v. Latvia that the sex offender imprisoned from 2008 to 2017 suffered degrading treatment in violation of article 3. That finding related to that individual at the time of his incarceration.

The respondent is right to point out that D. v. Latvia is not the first Strasbourg case to address the caste system and not the first case to recognise that degrading treatment in violation of article 3 can arise from a person’s prison status and subjection to demeaning tasks; it need not involve actual physical violence or an imminent threat thereof. As the case law shows, evidence of a breach of article 3 in one case at an earlier time is not necessarily cogent and convincing evidence of the necessary risk of breach in another case at another, later time.

That said, the Strasbourg court in D. v. Latvia assumed a role beyond examining the narrow issue of D’s treatment up to 2017. It might be thought logically unnecessary to mention the 2023 CPT report which dealt with conditions as at May 2022, more than four years after D’s complaint was filed. I suppose conditions in May 2022 could in principle throw some retrospective light on conditions earlier, up to 2017. But the primary reason for the court’s extensive post-2017 findings was to exert pressure for change in Latvian jails.

Against that background, I do not accept the appellants’ submission that Latvia has lost the presumption of compliance with article 3 because the measures taken in the last year and a half are inadequate to protect against the risk of degrading treatment of prisoners generally, in breach of article 3. At the most, it could be said that a person (for example, a serious sex offender) who is virtually certain to become an untouchable, could be at risk of such treatment.

I do not find it necessary to decide in these appeals whether that is the position, or whether the measures and the pathway to improvements since May 2024, explained in the response to the 2025 CPT report, are enough to negate such a risk. If it were necessary to address the issue head on, I might have decided to seek an assurance or further information from the Latvian authorities on what measures would be taken to protect the person against degrading treatment.

I come next to the position of the two appellants as individuals. I accept the respondent’s submission that Mr Sostaks did not in his evidence rely on any argument that he would necessarily be treated as an untouchable outcast if he is extradited to Latvia. His evidence was that he had drug debts. His counsel, Mr Meredith, rightly conceded in oral argument that owing debts (or drug related debts) alone did not inexorably lead to being treated as an untouchable.

I reject the submission that the jeopardy of becoming an untouchable through receipt of drug rehabilitation treatment is anywhere near sufficient to rebut the presumption of compliance with article 3. I find that it is not; first, because of the improving situation in Latvian prisons and in drug addiction treatment; and second, because I agree with DJ Clarke’s proposition in Mr Igoniņs’ case that having to serve the whole of a sentence is not degrading treatment in violation of article 3. I therefore reject this ground of appeal in Mr Sostaks’ case.

The same analysis applies to Mr Igoniņs. When last imprisoned in Latvia he was a mužik. He said in evidence that he was a police informer, addicted to fentanyl and in debt to drug dealers. He might well become an untouchable if he chose to attend for drug rehabilitation treatment, in the hope of early release. But that does not come near to rebutting the presumption of compliance. At worst, he would have to serve his sentence in full, probably again as a mužik, his status when last incarcerated. That is not degrading treatment. I therefore reject Mr Igoniņs’ only ground of appeal and his appeal must fail.