A ROMANIAN failed to turn up in the High Court yesterday to hear Mr Justice O'Sullivan rule that he had been illegally detained in Cork prison. Mr Iosca Constantin Stefan (19) was not located by his lawyers after the judge was told he left the court at 3 p.m. on Thursday.
Mr Stefan, along with his 18-year-old wife and child, were detained when they arrived illegally on May 20th on a ferry from France. When approached by gardai, Mr Stefan cut his wrist. Following hospital treatment he was taken to Cork prison.
Later he applied for refugee status, then claimed he was unlawfully detained. He was granted bail pending the hearing of his application to be released from detention.
On Thursday the court heard Mr Stefan's application that he was unlawfully detained. Mr Justice O'Sullivan was told by Mr John Hedigan SC, for the State, that Mr Stefan was not in court and under the rules was required to attend. Mr Stefan's counsel, Mr Peter Finlay, said he had been told his client had had a dizzy spell and had been brought to hospital.
Yesterday Mr Justice O'Sullivan asked if Mr Stefan had been found. Mr Finlay said that, regrettably, his client had not appeared but the extraordinary thing was that he (Mr Finlay) believed that it was unlikely that Mr Stefan would want to leave the country.
Mr Justice O'Sullivan said they had heard on Thursday that Mr Stefan had been taken to hospital and he presumed that had been checked. Mr Finlay said he could not confirm that Mr Stefan had gone to hospital but he had to believe that he did. On four other occasions Mr Stefan had appeared at court hearings.
Mr Justice O'Sullivan, giving judgment, said he was not satisfied the detention wad legal and he would order the release of Mr Stefan.
He said that following a previous High Court decision he did not have to decide whether the continued detention of an applicant pending determination of his application was valid under the regulations. In that previous case, the applicant had been in detention for more than two months and, therefore, illegally held (the two-month period was stipulated in the regulations).
In the present case Mr Stefan had been arrested on May 20th. The authorities had stated that his application for asylum would take another three or four weeks and that it was the State's intention not to return him out of this country until that application was processed. That would bring the date to July 25th or possibly the end of the month. This would clearly be beyond the two-month period.
Mr Justice O'Sullivan said the import of the detaining regulations was to send a person out of the country as soon as was practical. He did not consider the detention lawful where the applicant would not be returned until after the asylum application was processed.
The authorities could not say when that would be or even that he would be returned.