A case involving a Dublin man who claimed he was set up on drug charges by an illegal police sting has been declared inadmissible by a European court.

Robert Mills (27) had appealed to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights over a Court of Appeal ruling that a 2013 police sting did not constitute entrapment. Although the Strasbourg court shared the Irish court’s concern that Irish law did not have a formal system for authorising and supervising undercover operations, it said that Mills had been arrested as part of a broader operation authorised at the highest level of the police.

Participating officers had been specifically instructed, including on the issue of entrapment, and police witnesses had been cross-examined in detail in court by Mills’s lawyer about the conduct of the sting.

But the court warned that the line between legitimate infiltration by an undercover agent and instigation of a crime was more likely to be crossed if no clear and foreseeable procedure for authorising such operations was in place.

“Buy more next time”

Mills had been arrested after drug-squad officers had randomly approached two men for cannabis; one of the men had phoned Mills, who arrived in a car and sold the officer €25 of the drug. At the officer’s request Mills gave him a mobile-phone number for future contact. The next day the officer called him, and shortly afterwards Mills sold him more of the drug. He advised the officer to buy a larger quantity the next time. The final purchase took place a few days later.

Mills pleaded guilty after a failed attempt by his lawyer to claim entrapment and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on each count, suspended for two years. The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in December 2015.

The European Court of Human Rights said that nothing in the interaction indicated that the police had exerted any pressure on Mills, especially as he had arrived within minutes to make a small sale to a complete stranger, and as the other two sales were made with the same speed and ease as the first one. The Irish courts had considered that he would have behaved in the same way had he been offered the same opportunity to sell drugs by anyone else.

The inadmissibility decision was given by a committee of three judges: Nona Tsotsoria, of Georgia, Síofra O’Leary, of Ireland, and Latif Hüseynov, of Azerbaijan.