Background
Antonia Omirou, a UK citizen who has lived in England since 2014, was sought by Cyprus under a Part 1 European Arrest Warrant certified in September 2023. The warrant covered three sets of criminal proceedings: a prolonged campaign of online harassment and stalking directed at the former wife and vulnerable daughter of her partner (spanning 2020 to 2022, involving fabricated social media accounts, impersonation, publication of personal information, and threatening communications); abusive and threatening messages sent to a former tenant following a rent dispute in 2023; and threatening emails sent to two officials of a Cypriot public body in early 2023. The specified offences included harassment and stalking in aggravated and non-aggravated forms, computer-related forgery, data protection infringements, and threats of violence.
Extradition was ordered by a District Judge in February 2024. That decision was upheld on appeal by Collins Rice J in March 2025, who characterised the alleged conduct as serious, habitual, and predatory. An attempt to reopen the appeal on different statutory grounds was refused. However, following the April 2025 judgment in Costappis & others v Cyprus [2025] EWHC 785 (Admin)—which found that a 2024 CPT report revealed a significant deterioration in Cypriot prison conditions sufficient to engage Article 3—Cheema Grubb J granted the appellant permission to reopen her appeal on the sole ground of Article 3 ECHR compatibility.
Ms Omirou advanced two interrelated arguments: first, that systemic deficiencies at Nicosia Central Prison documented in the 2024 and 2025 CPT reports (overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate ventilation, limited out-of-cell time, passive smoking risks, and healthcare shortfalls) created a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment; and second, that her individual medical vulnerabilities—symptomatic asthma, a nasal disorder requiring ENT surgery, and a recovery from a laparoscopic hysterectomy in December 2025—rendered her particularly susceptible to harm in custody. She relied on four tranches of fresh evidence, including an expert report and addendum from Cypriot criminal law barrister Leto Cariolou.
The Court’s Holding
Mr Justice Sweeting dismissed the Article 3 appeal. The court applied the framework established in Costappis, which requires a holistic assessment of whether specific and binding assurances from the requesting state are sufficient to dispel any real risk of Article 3 ill-treatment identified in background CPT material. Cyprus provided two formal assurances from its Ministry of Justice and Public Order: a December 2023 letter guaranteeing a minimum of 3 square metres of personal space, and a more detailed June 2025 letter confirming provision of a personal bed and mattress, in-cell or promptly accessible toilet facilities, adequate ventilation, natural light, continuous access to hot water, and courtyard access from 07:00 to 17:00 daily, together with medical examination on admission and appropriate cell allocation. The court found these assurances materially indistinguishable from those Johnson J held sufficient to dispel Article 3 risk in Costappis following that case’s own supplementary information exercise in June 2025.
On the evidence of prison conditions, the court accepted the 2025 CPT report—published December 2025 following an April 2025 ad hoc visit—as the most current independent assessment, acknowledging that it identified persisting systemic problems at Nicosia Central Prison. However, the court noted that Block 3, where female prisoners are held, was not shown to suffer from all the deficiencies identified in general population areas, and that the Cypriot government’s response to the CPT indicated ongoing remedial steps. On passive smoking, the government’s response asserted that domestic legislation already prohibits smoking in communal areas and that allocation policies seek to separate smokers from non-smokers—matters also covered by the assurances’ ventilation commitments. The court found that the specific and enforceable guarantees, taken together, were sufficient to address the concerns arising from the CPT material in respect of this individual appellant.
In relation to Ms Omirou’s individual medical vulnerabilities, the court noted that Collins Rice J had already assessed the appellant’s asthma and respiratory conditions in the Article 8 context and found them manageable in custody. The June 2025 assurance expressly provided for medical assessment upon admission and appropriate cell allocation, directly addressing the concern that her conditions might not be accommodated. The fresh evidence, including the updated medical documentation and the Cariolou expert reports, did not establish conditions of such severity or complexity as to overcome the sufficiency of the assurances.
Key Takeaways
- Where Cyprus provides assurances that mirror those found sufficient by the Administrative Court in Costappis [2025] EWHC 785 (Admin)—covering personal space, bedding, sanitation, ventilation, natural light, and out-of-cell time—those assurances will generally be treated as sufficient to dispel the Article 3 risk identified in the 2024 and 2025 CPT reports on Cypriot prison conditions.
- A 2025 CPT report documenting continuing systemic problems at Nicosia Central Prison does not automatically displace the sufficiency of specific, binding assurances; courts must assess whether the assurances directly address the identified deficiencies for the particular requested person, and must consider whether the relevant area of the prison (here, the female block) shares those problems.
- Individual medical vulnerabilities—including post-operative recovery and asthma—do not independently bar extradition to Cyprus where the assurances include provision for medical examination on admission and appropriately allocated accommodation, and the conditions are not so severe or unusual as to be incapable of management in custody.
- The strict Fenyvesi threshold for fresh evidence on appeal applies even where evidence postdates the original hearing; expert evidence from a practitioner without dedicated prison-conditions expertise may face admissibility challenges.
Why It Matters
This decision confirms and extends the legal framework established by Costappis for assessing Article 3 challenges to extradition to Cyprus. By holding that the June 2025 Cypriot assurances—now provided in essentially standard form across multiple extradition cases—are sufficient to meet the Article 3 threshold even in the face of the 2025 CPT report, the judgment provides important precedent for future Cyprus-bound extradition cases before the Administrative Court. It also clarifies that the female wing at Nicosia Central Prison is treated as a distinct environment for the purposes of the holistic conditions assessment.
More broadly, the case illustrates the limits of individual medical vulnerability arguments in the Article 3 extradition context where the requesting state’s assurances expressly address medical reception and placement. Practitioners advising requested persons in Cyprus cases will need to demonstrate that any medical condition is of exceptional severity not contemplated by the standard assurance framework, and that CPT reports identify specific, unremedied deficiencies in the particular accommodation block relevant to the individual, rather than systemic problems across the entire prison estate.