The District Court in Warsaw has rejected a request to issue a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, Judge Anna Ptaszek, the court’s spokesperson for criminal matters, announced. She added that the ruling is final and cannot be appealed.
Speaking to the Polish Press Agency (PAP), Judge Ptaszek also said that the court rejected a request to issue an arrest warrant for the former justice minister in the event that he was staying in the United Kingdom.
Asked about the reasoning behind Monday’s decisions, she explained that, in the case of the EAW, the request was rejected because it had not been demonstrated that Ziobro was staying within the European Union or intended to travel to an EU member state. Similarly, in the second case, the court found that it had not been shown that he was in the United Kingdom or planned to travel there.
She reiterated that both rulings are final and not subject to appeal.
Ziobro has been charged in an investigation into alleged irregularities involving the Justice Fund. In February this year, following a district court’s decision to place him in pre-trial detention, a nationwide arrest warrant was issued for the former minister. Prosecutors subsequently applied to the court for a European Arrest Warrant.
At that time, the former justice minister was already in Hungary, where he had been granted international protection by the government of Viktor Orbán. On May 10, after Orbán’s election defeat, Ziobro announced that he was in the United States. He stated that he had not fled Poland and was traveling on a document issued together with the asylum he had been granted in Hungary.
The proceedings concerning the EAW were initially delayed after the first judge assigned to the case, and subsequently a second judge, were recused. In early June, Judge Tomasz Grochowicz was randomly assigned to hear the application for the warrant.
At that stage, however, the proceedings concerning Ziobro’s detention had not yet been concluded because the defense’s appeal against the pre-trial detention order was still pending.
Most recently, on July 1, the District Court in Warsaw upheld the pre-trial detention order against Ziobro, dismissing the appeals filed by his defense lawyers.