AC-2024-LON-002673 - [2025] EWHC 2932 (Admin)

An appeal against the decision of a district judge may be brought on a question of law or fact: s.26(3) of the 2003 Act. The court may allow the appeal if the district judge ought to have decided a question before him at the extradition hearing differently: s.27(3)(a). In the present case, the question is whether the Judge ought to have found that extradition would be a disproportionate interference with the right to family life of the Appellant, his partner and, particularly, his son and two step-daughters. The approach on appeal in an article 8 case is set out in Celinski at [20]-[24]. Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd CJ held at [24]:

“The single question therefore for the appellate court is whether or not the district judge made the wrong decision. It is only if the court concludes that the decision was wrong, applying what Lord Neuberger PSC said, as set out above, that the appeal can be allowed. Findings of fact, especially if evidence has been heard, must ordinarily be respected. In answering the question whether the district judge, in the light of those findings of fact, was wrong to decide that extradition was or was not proportionate, the focus must be on the outcome, that is on the decision itself. Although the district judge’s reasons for the proportionality decision must be considered with care, errors and omissions do not of themselves necessarily show that the decision on proportionality itself was wrong.”