The Regional Court in Warsaw has rejected the request to issue a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, Judge Anna Ptaszek, the court’s spokesperson for criminal matters, told PAP. She added that the ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
In a statement to PAP, Judge Ptaszek also said that the court rejected a separate request to issue an arrest warrant for the former head of the Ministry of Justice should he be found in the United Kingdom.
Asked about the reasoning behind Monday’s decisions, she explained that, with regard to the EAW, the request failed to demonstrate that Ziobro was currently staying within the European Union or intended to travel to an EU member state. Likewise, in the second case, the court found there was no evidence that he was in, or planning to travel to, the United Kingdom.
She reiterated that both rulings are final and cannot be appealed.
Ziobro has been charged in an investigation concerning alleged irregularities involving the Justice Fund. In February this year, after a district court ordered his detention, Polish authorities issued a nationwide wanted notice for the former minister. They subsequently asked the court to issue a European Arrest Warrant (EAW).
At that time, the former Justice Minister was already in Hungary, where he had been granted international protection by the government of Viktor Orban. On May 10 this year, following Orban’s election defeat, Ziobro announced that he was in the United States. He stated that he had not fled Poland and was travelling on a document issued to him together with the right to asylum, which he had received in Hungary.
During the proceedings concerning the EAW request, the case was reassigned multiple times. First, one judge was recused, followed by a second judge who had also been assigned to hear the request. At the beginning of June, Judge Tomasz Grochowicz was randomly selected to take over the case.
At that stage, however, the proceedings concerning Ziobro’s detention had not yet been concluded, as the defence’s appeal against the pre-trial detention order was still pending.
Most recently, on July 1, the Regional Court in Warsaw upheld the decision to place Ziobro in pre-trial detention, dismissing the appeals filed by his defence lawyers.