Brussels, 16/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - As a general rule, a national court may not refuse to carry out a European arrest warrant when the court issuing it has expressly stated that a previous ruling delivered under its legal system is not a “final judgment” covering the acts referred to in the arrest warrant issued by it. In cases such as this, the judicial authority which arrests the accused may not then refuse to surrender him/her to the issuing authority.
With this ruling, delivered in Case C-261/09 on 16 November, the Court gave its answer to the Stuttgart appeal court in the extradition procedure being undertaken against Gaetano Mantello. In 2005, Mantello was convicted by the Tribunale di Catania (Catania District Court, Italy) of unlawful possession of cocaine intended for sale. He subsequently served a prison sentence in Italy. In 2008, the same court issued a European arrest warrant in respect of Mantello, alleging that, between 2004 and 2005, he had been involved in organised drug trafficking in a number of Italian towns and in Germany. Mantello was then arrested by the German authorities. The Italian court, seeking Mantello's extradition, informed the Stuttgart appeal court that the judgment delivered in 2005 was not a bar to executing the warrant, since it related to facts other than those contained in the warrant.
In view of the ne bis in idem principle (that no one may be sentenced twice for the same crime), the German court asked the Court of Justice whether it might oppose execution of the arrest warrant, since, at the time of the investigation which led to Mantello's conviction for possession of cocaine, the Italian investigators already had enough evidence to prosecute him for participating in the organised trafficking of narcotic drugs but did not pass this on to the investigating judge so as not to compromise their investigation.
The German court asked if the concept of “the same acts”, contained in the Council framework decision on the European arrest warrant, referred to the law of the member state issuing the warrant (in this case, Italy), to that of the executing state (Germany) or required a separate interpretation, specific to the Union.
In the first two hypotheses, national laws do not oppose prosecution following an initial ruling for alleged crimes set out in the warrant. However, in the third hypothesis, the German court wondered if, for it to allow proceedings against the accused, the investigators had to have been unaware, during the first trial which led to the 2005 judgment, of the existence of other individual offences and of an offence relating to participation in a criminal organisation.
In its ruling, the Court confirmed the third option, stating that interpretation of the concept of “the same acts” in previous cases in relation to the Schengen Implementing Convention is equally valid for the purposes of the Framework Decision. However, in its view, the national court's questions in actual fact relate more to the concept of “finally judged”, that is, whether the 2005 judgment brought the public action to a definitive end. The Court confirmed that whether a person has been “finally” judged is determined by the law of the member state in which judgment was delivered. In this specific case, under Italian law, the first ruling does not definitively bar further prosecution at national level in respect of certain acts and does not, therefore, constitute a procedural obstacle to the possible opening or continuation of criminal proceedings in respect of the same acts in one of the member states of the European Union. (F.G./transl.rt)