CEDH · CASELAW;CLIN;ENG — 8 juin 2021

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Bulgaria - 69154/11 and 69163/11 Judgment 8.6.2021 [Section IV] Article 3 Inhuman treatment Excessive use of physical force by police officers while searching suspects’ homes; no offence against the dignity of their family members: violation; no violation Facts – In October 2010 the regional prosecutor’s office brough criminal proceedings against five persons, including Mr Iliev and Mr Ganchev, for illegal exercise of financial activity and handling stolen goods. In April 2011 the Regional Court authorised searches of each applicant’s home, which took place on the morning of 18 April 2011. The five applicants, namely the Ilievi couple and their daughter, who had been nineteen years old at the material time, and the Ganchevi spouses, complained that the police operation in their homes had subjected them to inhuman and degrading treatment and that domestic law had provided them with no effective remedy. Law – Article 3: The police operation in question had pursued the legitimate aim of carrying out an arrest, a house search and seizure of items, as well as the public-interest aim of combating crime. The applicants had not been physically injured during the two impugned police operations, and the police officers involved had not forced their way into the respective homes. Nevertheless, the operations had involved some use of physical force: several masked and armed officers had burst into the applicants’ homes very early in the morning, pushing Mrs Ilieva and Mrs Gancheva back and pinning Mr Iliev and Mr Ganchev to the ground before handcuffing them. The Court therefore had to establish whether that use of physical force had been rendered strictly necessary by the applicants’ behaviour. 1. As regards the treatment sustained by the two male applicants – The aim of the police operations at Mr Iliev’s and Mr Ganchev’s respective homes had been to arrest them, since both of them were suspected of having illegally exercised a financial activity and handled stolen goods, and to conduct a search of the premises to obtain physical or documentary evidence. The criminal investigation had been launched six months previously, and there had been several suspects in the case, though no particular group of individuals had been suspected of having committed violent criminal acts. Unlike in the case of Gutsanovi v. Bulgaria , the authorities had received the requisite prior authorisations for conducting the searches of the applicants’ respective homes. However, exercising their jurisdiction under domestic law, the judges who had given the authorisations had considered the conformity of the house searches requested with the provisions of domestic law without dealing with the issue of the modus operandi to be followed by the police officers during the planned operations. Furthermore, there was nothing in the case file to suggest that the two applicants had had any history of violence or that they might have represented a danger to the police officers involved in the operation conducted in their homes. Moreover, neither of the applicants had resisted the police officers during the operations in their respective homes. All those factors clearly pointed to the excessive nature of the conduct of the police officers in pinning both applicants to the ground, handcuffing them and training their guns on them. Given those circumstances, the degree of force used against Mr Iliev and Mr   Ganchev, which had not been strictly necessary by their behaviour, had infringed their human dignity. Accordingly, they had sustained degrading treatment. Conclusion : violation (unanimously). 2. As regards the treatment sustained by the other three applicants – The police teams had opted not to force the entrance doors to the applicants’ dwellings: the police officers had rung at the doors and Mrs Ilieva and Mrs Gancheva had opened. This had brought the officers face-to-face with the two female applicants, who had not been expecting any such visit. While entering the dwellings the police officers had jostled the two applicants in question and had briefly pointed their weapons at them. The physical interaction between the officers and Mrs Ilieva and Mrs Gancheva had therefore been very brief and low-key. Subsequently, there had been no physical contact between Ms Ilieva and the police officers: the young woman had seen her father being arrested by the officers and had reacted emotionally. There was no evidence to suggest that the police officers had infringed the human dignity of the three female applicants. Police operations involving entering private homes and arresting suspects inevitably caused negative emotions in the persons targeted by such measures, such as the applicants. However, none of them seemed particularly badly affected by the actions of the police officers on account, for example, of a poor state of health or Ms Ilieva’s youthfulness, for example. In that regard, none of the three applicants had submitted evidence to show that any of them had been suffering from an illness that might have been exacerbated by the officers’ actions, and at the material time Ms Ilieva had been nineteen years old, no longer a small child. In the light of those considerations, and in the specific circumstances of the case, the police officers’ actions vis-à-vis those three applicants, which had been very brief and low-key, did not appear to have been disproportionate in relation to the reaction of the three applicants to such an unexpected, stressful event as an early-morning incursion by the police into their respective homes, and that the actions in question had not infringed their human dignity. Conclusion : no violation (unanimously). The Court also unanimously found a violation of Article 13 in conjunction with Article 3 on account of the fact that neither the disciplinary procedure under the Law on the Ministry of the Interior nor the action for damages against the State had constituted sufficiently effective domestic remedies for the five applicants to uphold their right not to be subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3. Article 41: EUR 3,000 to Mr Iliev and Mr Ganchev each in respect of non-pecuniary damage; finding of a violation of Article 13 sufficient in respect of non-pecuniary damage sustained by Mrs Ilieva, Miss Ilieva and Mrs Gancheva. (See also Gutsanovi v. Bulgaria , 34529/10, 15 October 2013, Legal summary ; Bouyid v. Belgium [GC], 23380/09, 28 September 2015, Legal summary )   © Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court. Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes