AC-2024-LON-001762 - [2025] EWHC 2293 (Admin)

On 6 March 2024, the Claimant was arrested under the Warrant. He appeared before District Judge Snow at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court and consented to his extradition to Portugal pursuant to section 45 of the 2003 Act. Had the District Judge been informed of the Request he would have been required by section 51 of the 2003 Act not to order the Claimant’s extradition until he was informed what order had been made by the SSHD under section 179(2). However, it was mistakenly assumed that the court was already aware of the Request, and the District Judge was therefore not informed of it by either party. Without objection, the contents of the Warrant were explained to the Claimant, as were the consequences of him consenting to extradition. He confirmed that he consented and he read and signed the relevant document. The District Judge then signed the consent order and ordered the Claimant’s surrender pursuant to section 46(6) of the 2003 Act.

Later in the hearing on 6 March, Mr Cooper relied on the Request when addressing the District Judge on the question of bail and he took the court to section 179. He invited the District Judge to revoke the order. The District Judge confirmed that he was unaware of the Request and invited submissions as to whether he had the power to do so. His conclusion was that he did not have the power to reopen the extradition order which he had made. Instead, he ordered that the Claimant should not be removed pending the SSHD’s decision under section 179. The Claimant was remanded in custody.

On 8 March 2024, there was a further hearing before District Judge Snow to consider whether the extradition order which he had made two days earlier could be reopened. Mr Cooper invited him to set his order aside but he concluded that there was no lawful basis for him to do so at that stage: see R (Klimento) v Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2012] EWHC 2051 (Admin); [2013] 1 WLR 420. The Claimant was readmitted to bail.

On 16 July 2024, the Claimant filed a second claim for judicial review, AC-2024-LON-002674 (“Claim 2”), challenging the decisions of District Judge Snow on 6 March to order his extradition to Portugal and/or to refuse to reopen that Order on 8 March. The grounds of challenge were that the District Judge’s decision was ultra vires in that he should be deemed to have been informed of the Request for the purposes of section 51 of the 2003 Act and therefore was prohibited from making an extradition order (“Ground 1”); that his Order resulted from a procedural irregularity in that the District Judge was informed of the Request and refused to rescind the extradition order (“Ground 2”); that the decision of the District Judge was an unlawful fetter on the SSHD’s discretion under section 179 (“Ground 3”); and that the District Judge erred in law in failing to rescind his earlier decision at the hearing on 8 March 2024 (“Ground 4”).

As noted above, it was on 19 December 2024 that Choudhury J directed a rolled up hearing, which was to be in respect of both of the Claim and Claim 2. However, by consent, on 20 June 2025 Choudhury J ordered that the 6 March order of District Judge Snow be quashed. Claim 2 is therefore no longer “live”. The basis for the consent order was that the District Judge had confirmed, in a witness statement dated 15 August 2024, that he was unaware of the Request when he made his extradition order. When Mr Cooper referred to the Request after the order had been made, he did not draw the case of R (Berners) v Westminster Magistrates’ Court [2010] EWHC 1010 (Admin), to the District Judge’s attention. The judge had therefore been unaware that he had the power to rescind his Order but he now agreed that Berners would have enabled him to do so on 6 March. This was agreed by the parties to amount to the District Judge (through no fault of his own) proceeding on a mistaken factual premise, amounting to a procedural irregularity, (i.e. that there was no other extradition claim in respect of the Claimant) and on an erroneous basis in law (i.e. that he did not have a power to reopen the extradition order at the hearing on 6 March 2024).