AC-2024-LON-002099 - [2025] EWHC 1980 (Admin)

Article 8 ECHR grants the right to respect for one’s private and family life. The approach to article 8 in extradition cases is well-established and not in dispute. It has been set out in a series of cases of high authority: Norris v USA [2010] UKSC 9, [2010] 2 AC 487; HH v Italy [2012] UKSC 2; Celinski v Poland [2015] EWHC 1274 (Admin) (Divisional Court).

Most recently, the Supreme Court has revisited article 8 in Andrysiewicz v Poland [2025] UKSC 23 (“Andrysiewicz”), and particularly between paras 31-43. This is an authority it will be necessary to come to. The appellant’s case involves a conviction warrant. In Celinski, the Divisional Court said at para 13:

“13.

Sixth in relation to conviction warrants:

(1)

The judge at the extradition hearing will seldom have the detailed knowledge of the proceedings or of the background or previous offending history of the offender which the sentencing judge had before him.

(2)

Each member state is entitled to set its own sentencing regime and levels of sentence. Provided it is in accordance with the Convention, it is not for a UK judge to second guess that policy. The prevalence and significance of certain types of offending are matters for the requesting state and judiciary to decide; currency conversions may tell little of the real monetary value of items stolen or of sums defrauded. For example, if a state has a sentencing regime under which suspended sentences are passed on conditions such as regular reporting and such a regime results in such sentences being passed much more readily than the UK, then a court in the UK should respect the importance to courts in that state of seeking to enforce non-compliance with the terms of a suspended sentence.

(3)

It will therefore rarely be appropriate for the court in the UK to consider whether the sentence was very significantly different from what a UK court would have imposed, let

alone to approach extradition issues by substituting its own view of what the appropriate sentence should have been. As Lord Hope of Craighead DPSC said in HH [2013] 1 AC 338 , para 95 in relation to the appeal in the case of PH, a conviction warrant:

“But I have concluded that it is not open to us, as the requested court, to question the decision of the requesting authorities to issue an arrest warrant at this stage. This is their case, not ours. Our duty is to give effect to the procedure which they have decided to invoke and the proper place for leniency to be exercised, if there are grounds for leniency,

is Italy.”