IT BEGGARS BELIEF
Romanian thug was sentenced for attempted murder but fled to UK to dodge justice. Now a judge says he can STAY... and, you guessed it, it’s all down to human rights
A ROMANIAN gangster is free to walk the streets of Britain because ‘overcrowded’ jails in his homeland might breach his human rights.
Convicted mobster Adrian Preda, 36, was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison in Romania for attempted murder, blackmail and organised crime.
But the champion cagefighter went on the run by skipping bail and sneaking into Britain. Now a judge here has ruled against extraditing him back home – in case overcrowded Romanian jails breach his right to avoid ‘degrading’ treatment.
District judge Robin McPhee, sitting at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, told Preda: ‘You are free to go.’
To add insult to injury, he also allowed the gangster to charge taxpayers £56 for parking his £60,000 BMW outside court. Even Preda’s lawyer told him he was ‘very lucky’, as MPs warned the case could open the floodgates to criminals who only have to reach ‘soft-touch’ Britain to cheat justice.
Tory MP Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs select committee, said: ‘This judgment beggars belief and makes our courts the laughing stock of Europe.
‘How on earth can it be right that a convicted attempted murderer, who’s absconded from Romania, is now completely free to roam the streets of the UK based on a judge’s concern about the lack of cushiness of Romanian jails?’
Fellow Tory MP Andrew Bridgen added: ‘This makes a mockery of the EU and our own judicial system. It also sets a very dangerous precedent because any similar characters from Romania will be using this and it will open the door to every criminal who will want to come here if they know they can just walk free. It’s absolutely outrageous.’
Preda is the latest in a string of Romanian criminals exploiting a legal loophole to head to the UK before using human rights laws to prevent themselves being sent back.
His gang – ‘the Sportsmen’ – flooded Europe with more than £2 million worth of heroin, stole machine guns and pistols from a Romanian army base, and were known to open fire on rivals in the streets.
In February 2016, Preda and 28 fellow mobsters were convicted in a court in Bucharest. Preda was found guilty of attempting to murder rival gangsters at a shopping centre when he and his cronies attacked them with knives and swords.
In addition, he was found guilty of threatening to order the murder of a man to whom he had given a high-interest loan, as well as fights related to a turf war with a rival gang called the Cats.
His gang was jailed for a combined 220 years, although Preda’s sentence was reduced to five years and six months in December 2016 at the Romanian Supreme Court.
Inexplicably, he had been granted bail during an earlier hearing, and apparently no one had thought to rescind it – so Preda promptly fled the country.
The gangster has since been living in a semi- detached £367,000 home with his partner in a neat cul-de-sac in Northolt, North-west London. On January 9 this year, he handed himself in and was arrested by the Metropolitan Police under a European Arrest Warrant (EAW). He was given an electronic tag and curfew while awaiting an extradition hearing.
On Tuesday, the court was told that extraditing Preda to Romania to serve his sentence could breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture and ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’.
Ruling in Preda’s favour, Judge McPhee said case law had established Romanian jail cells could be too small, and he had received no assurances Preda’s human rights would not be breached. The judge told him: ‘This is a case in which I am clear I would need an assurance, to satisfy me that there would be no breach of his Article 3 rights. Therefore, I am discharging his case. You are free to go.’
Outside court, Preda’s lawyer, Benjamin Seifert, was heard telling his client, who also received legal aid: ‘You are very lucky.’
As an EU citizen living in Britain, there is technically nothing to stop Preda claiming benefits.
Preda benefited from case law set last June when the High Court blocked the extradition of two Romanian criminals because the cells in their homeland’s semi-open prisons were too small. The Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘In light of a recent ruling from the High Court, which upheld the recommendation of the European Court of Human Rights, it was not appropriate to appeal the decision.’
But Mr Loughton said: ‘This judgment needs to be reviewed urgently otherwise, when this gets around, it’s just a green light for any absconder from justice to come and stick two fingers up at the UK justice system on the basis we’re a soft touch.’