British father spared extradition to Greek jail over minor holiday car crash thirteen years ago
Judge criticises ‘appalling delay’ that led to Paul Wright telling the very first he knew about being convicted in his absence in Greece in two thousand six was when a Wrexham police officer knocked on his door in March 2016
- Adam Lusher
- Tuesday one November two thousand sixteen 16:54 GMT
The Independent Online
Paul Wright arriving for his extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court Victoria Jones/PA
A judge has criticised “appalling delays” by the Greek authorities while sparing a British father extradition to Greece over a minor car crash that happened thirteen years ago.
Paul Wright, 34, claimed that he was not even the driver of a car that crashed in Crete in May 2003, and that the very first he knew about having been convicted in his absence was in March two thousand sixteen “when a police officer from Wrexham turned up at my door with the [European arrest] warrant.”
If extradited, the father-of-two could have spent months in a Greek jail.
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But instead District Judge Mike Snow discharged him from Westminster Magistrates’ Court and criticised the “appalling” delay inbetween the minor crash and officers turning up at Mr Wright’s door in North Wales more than a decade later.
The judge had been told how the crash happened when Mr Wright, from Mold, Flintshire, north Wales, was visiting Malia, Crete, on holiday as a 21-year-old.
Mr Wright, whose wifey is expecting their third child, said he was a passenger in a car driven by his friend who had suggested to stir it for a bar worker they had got to know during their break.
Mr Wright claimed his friend was driving when the car collided with a parked scooter a little further down the road.
He said the car holder had accused him and his friends of “stealing the car” but that Greek police then told the proprietor: “You gave them the keys, it’s your responsibility. There’s nothing more that I can do.”
“As far as I was worried,” Mr Wright told the court, “It was all over with.”
Instead, the extradition hearing was told, the authorities in Crete summonsed him to attend trial on October two 2006 in Greece. By then, however, he had moved from the Birmingham address he had given to the Greek police, so he failed to receive the notice.
In his absence, a court in Heraklion, the administrative capital of Crete, attempted the case in two thousand six and sentenced Mr Wright to fifteen months’ imprisonment or a fine for criminal harm and for taking a motor vehicle without consent.