Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2A 2LL
B e f o r e:
MR JUSTICE MITTING
Between:
AIDAS PAREDINIS
Appellant
v
DARIUS VALYS, PROSECUTOR GENERAL, LITHUANIA
Respondent
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The Appellant did not attend
Ms Natasha Draycott (instructed by the Crown Prosecution Service) appeared on behalf of the Respondent
J U D G M E N T
MR JUSTICE MITTING: An accusation European arrest warrant was issued by the Prosecutor General of Lithuania on 16 March 2012 and certified by SOCA on 21 September 2012. The appellant was arrested on 24 September. His extradition was ordered by Senior District Judge Riddle on 17 December 2012. The warrant seeks his extradition for the purpose of being prosecuted for two offences:
Disrupting public order by means including criminal damage on 7 July 2009;
Violently resisting arrest on the same date;
Humiliating and insulting police officers acting in the course of their duty on the same date.
Three challenges were advanced before the District Judge and are repeated in the provisional grounds of appeal. The third offence, it is said, has no equivalent in the law of England and Wales. The District Judge concluded that that offence did have an equivalent, namely section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. He reached that conclusion because of the particular circumstances alleged in the warrant, that a number of men acting together under the influence of alcohol using "taboo" language, which humiliated and insulted a police officer, would amount, if prosecuted in England, to an offence under section 5. The District Judge was satisfied that such behaviour would, if prosecuted in England, have been likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress. The Senior District Judge's conclusion was unimpeachable and I reject that ground of appeal.
The second ground is that due to the passage of time it would be oppressive or unjust to extradite the appellant, and the third, that his rights under Article 8 would be infringed if he were to be extradited.
The Senior District Judge took those two grounds together. The appellant has been in the United Kingdom for three years working as a butcher at Morrisons. The District Judge accepted that he was not a fugitive, but nevertheless concluded that it would not be disproportionate to extradite him. The offences, although not of the most serious kind, cannot properly be described as so trivial that it would be disproportionate to disrupt the appellant's private life by extraditing him. The Senior District Judge was clearly entitled to reach those conclusions. They were right for the reasons which he gave. This appeal is dismissed.