The High Court has reserved judgment on extradition proceedings brought against a Co Cork couple who are wanted by the US authorities for allegedly kidnapping their grandson and taking him to Ireland.
Timothy and Ethel Blake outside court yesterday
Tim and Ethel Blake, both 60, are wanted in Illinois on charges of the aggravated kidnapping of their daughter's son, Dylan, in 2004.
The couple, from Lower Midleton Street in Cobh, Co Cork, face a maximum 30-year prison sentence if convicted.
Mr and Mrs Blake became embroiled in a transatlantic custody battle with their daughter Serena Benwell when they took the boy back to Ireland from his new home in Winthrop Harbor, north of Chicago, in July 2004.
The young boy had previously lived with Mr and Mrs Blake in Cork, but was taken back by his mother when she moved to the States to marry a US naval officer.
The boy returned to live with his mother, stepfather, three older brothers and sister in the United States in November 2004 after his mother invoked the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction.
Reserving his decision after a two day extradition hearing yesterday, Mr Justice Michael Peart said he would treat the matter with the "urgency that it deserves from everyone's point of view" but could not give a precise date when judgment would be given. He adjourned the matter for mention to November 16th next.
Lawyers defending the Blakes today claimed no actual extradition request has ever existed. Defence barrister Colman Fitzgerald SC told the High Court the couple had previously sought a custody order from Cork Circuit Court and that the boy was made a ward of the court.
That order still existed to this day, meaning the grandparents could not be found guilty of a similar offence in Ireland, he said.
Mr Fitzgerald said documents sent to Ireland from the Illinois authorities outlining the charges against the Blakes do not constitute a formal request for extradition.
It would take "verbal and logical gymnastics of the highest order" to extract a request from the "number of documents bundled together", he said.
Although there was correspondence on behalf of the people of Illinois - and not the United States -seeking the couple's extradition, Mr Fitzgerald argued it was technically invalid.
"There is no provision in this country to extradite people to the state of Illinois," he said.
The court heard there was no corresponding offence in Ireland to aggravated kidnapping, since the Non-fatal Offences Against the State Act was introduced in 1997.