CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 27 mars 2007

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s40F41F73 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s6B505E72 { margin:0pt; padding-left:0pt } .s1C7BEF1E { margin-left:28.52pt; padding-left:7.48pt; font-family:serif } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS   191 27.3.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT ISTRATII AND OTHERS v. MOLDOVA   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Istratii and Others v. Moldova (application no. 8721/05).   The Court held unanimously that there had been: a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights concerning Viorel Istratii’s inadequate medical care while in detention and his being handcuffed to a heater in hospital; a violation of Article 3 of the Convention for all three applicants concerning the conditions of their detention in the Ministry of Justice remand centre; a violation of Article 5 § 3 (right to liberty and security); and, a violation of Article 5 § 4 (right to have lawfulness of detention decided speedily by a court).   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court awarded 6,000 euros (EUR) to Mr   Istratii, EUR   4,000 to Mr Burcovschi and EUR   5,000 to Mr   Luţcan, in respect of non-pecuniary damage, and a total of EUR 4,000 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicants, Viorel Istratii, Alexandru Burcovschi and Roman Luţcan, are Moldovan nationals who were born in 1971, 1970 and 1976, respectively. They all live in Chişinău.   On 25 October 2004 the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal investigation into fraud – involving the applicants – in connection with the purchase of plots of land in Chişinău, which had allegedly cost the State approximately EUR 15,000.   On 12 November 2004 Buiucani District Court issued warrants for the applicants’ pre-trial detention for 10 days on the grounds, in particular, that the applicants were suspected of having committed a serious offence and that there was a risk of them absconding, re-offending or obstructing the criminal investigation.   The applicants appealed unsuccessfully. They argued that they had no criminal record and had not attempted to interfere in any way with the investigation. Each emphasised that he was permanently resident in Chişinău and had special medical needs. Mr   Burcovschi claimed that his family depended on him for financial support, including his elderly mother, who suffered from heart disease, and Mr Luţcan, that he had not had the opportunity to see his son, born the day of his arrest.   On 18 November 2004, the applicants’ detention on remand was extended by a further 30 days and then again on another three occasions, in December 2004, January 2005 and February 2005. The applicants appealed unsuccessfully; the Court of Appeal following the district court’s reasoning.   The applicants were held in the remand centre of the Chişinău Centre for Fighting Economic Crime and Corruption (CFECC) from 12 November 2004 to 23 February 2005. On 18   November 2004 Mr Istratii had an acute attack of paraproctitis with rectal haemorrhaging. He claimed that, at the time, no medical staff were present and that he had to wait three hours before being taken to hospital. On arrival at the hospital he was handcuffed to a heater, while waiting for his operation, and was guarded at all times by two CFECC officers. Four hours after the operation, the officers requested Mr Istratii’s transfer to a detainee hospital, two-and-a-half hours away, despite his not being able to move independently due to the pain and risk of bleeding and despite the recommended one-month recovery period after such surgery. Medical reports confirmed that Mr Istratii complained of post-surgery problems in the months following his transfer.   While they were being held in the CFECC detention centre the applicants could only meet their lawyers from behind a glass partition which did not enable them to exchange documents. They claimed they were able to hear conversations between other detainees and their lawyers which made them reluctant to discuss their own cases at length.   On 23 February 2005 all three applicants were transferred to the remand centre of the Ministry of Justice in Chişinău where they complained of overcrowding, poor ventilation, poor heating, lack of medicine, food and bedding.   They were finally released on 29   April 2005, largely on the grounds they had put forward in their first appeal.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 5 March 2005.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Nicolas Bratza (British), President , Josep Casadevall (Andorran), Giovanni Bonello (Maltese), Kristaq Traja (Albanian), Stanislav Pavlovschi (Moldovan), Lech Garlicki (Polish), Ján Šikuta (Slovak), judges , and also Fatoş Aracı , Deputy Section Registrar . 3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaints The applicants complained about the conditions of their detention and the lack of medical assistance available. They further alleged that the courts had not given relevant and sufficient reasons for their detention and that they had been prevented from communicating in private with their lawyers. They relied on Articles 3, 5 §§ 3 and 4 and 8.   Decision of the Court   Article 3   Conditions in the CFECC remand centre The Court noted that the Moldovan Government had not submitted any evidence that medical personnel had been present in the CFECC remand centre on 18 November 2004. In addition, no explanation had been given for Mr Istratii’s three-hour wait to receive medical assistance. He had been left in pain and in a state of anxiety throughout that time. The Court concluded that he had not been given timely medical assistance in the CFECC remand centre and had been left in a state of anxiety in respect of his health.   The Court further observed that, less than four hours after he had had surgery, Mr Istratii had been taken to another hospital and that the transfer took two-and-a-half hours. It also noted that the recovery period after such surgery was one month and that Mr Istratii could not have moved independently after the surgery due to pain and the risk of bleeding. In such conditions, where there had been no real risk of escape and where the recovery time allowed was very short and the journey time relatively long, the Court was not convinced that concerns about the applicant's possible escape should have outweighed the clear need to ensure his recovery.   The Government had given no explanation for the need to handcuff the applicant, merely emphasising that he had not been handcuffed during surgery. Indeed, the applicant's medical condition (both before and after surgery) effectively excluded any risk of escape or violence and there was no claim that Mr Istratii had had any history of violence. In such circumstances, and in the light of the fact that two CFECC officers had been guarding the applicant in his hospital room, his handcuffing to a heater was disproportionate to the needs of security and unjustifiably humiliated him, whether or not that had been the intention.   In the Court's view, the failure to provide immediate medical assistance to the applicant in an emergency situation, as well as his transfer to another hospital prior to his recovery, together with the humiliation of being handcuffed while in hospital, amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.   There had accordingly been a violation of Article 3 in respect of Mr Istratii.   The Court found no violation of Article 3 concerning the lack of medical assistance available in the CFECC remand centre concerning Mr Burcovschi and Mr Luţcan, because the lack of such assistance, in circumstances where it was not needed, could not, of itself, amount to a violation of Article 3.   Conditions in the Ministry of Justice remand centre The Court noted that the conditions of detention in the remand centre of the Ministry of Justice were reviewed by the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) in 1998, 2001 and 2004 and that, on each occasion, serious shortcomings had been found, despite some recent repairs, mostly funded by the detainees themselves or charitable organisations. Those findings were corroborated by the various reports prepared by the domestic authorities.   While the Court did not exclude the possibility of improvements in the conditions of detention between the visit by the CPT in September 2004 and the applicants' detention in February-April 2005, the Government had not submitted any evidence of such improvements.   Certain complaints coincided with the CPT’s findings: the CPT confirmed an occupancy rate of around 2m2 per detainee and that “the food served was repulsive and virtually inedible” and contained rodents and insects. Reports from the domestic authorities confirmed prison overcrowding, limited quantities of food and very limited availability of bedding, most of which was inadequate through overuse. The Court noted that the applicants had spent 23 hours a day during more than two months in those conditions.   The Court considered that the applicants’ conditions of detention, principally the overcrowding and insufficient quantity and quality of food, the lack of adequate bedding and the very limited access to daylight, as well as the insufficient sanitary conditions in the cell, amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment and that there had therefore been a violation of Article 3 in respect of all three applicants.   Article 5 § 3   The Court noted that the domestic courts had given no consideration to any of the applicants' arguments in their decisions concerning their detention, even though they were under a legal obligation to do so. Moreover, although prolongation of detention on remand was only to be ordered “in exceptional circumstances”, none of the courts prolonging the applicants' detention appeared to have identified any such exceptional circumstances. It was only on 29 April 2005 that a court ordered the applicant's release and on grounds which had been invoked by them from the outset, which appeared to confirm that no proper consideration had been given by the courts to the justification for the applicants' continued detention before that date. There had therefore been a violation of Article 5 § 3.   Article 5 § 4   The Court noted that the problem of alleged lack of confidentiality of lawyer-client communications in the CFECC detention centre had long been a matter of serious concern for the entire community of lawyers in Moldova and that it had even been the cause of a strike organised by the Moldovan Bar Association. The Bar's requests to verify the presence of interception devices in the glass partition had been rejected by the CFECC administration, which appeared to have contributed to the lawyers' suspicions. Such concern and protest by the Bar Association would, in the Court's view, have been sufficient to raise a doubt about confidentiality in the mind of an objective observer. The applicants' reference to their own experience of having overheard discussions between other detainees and their lawyers was far from proving that surveillance was carried out in the CFECC meeting room. However, against the background of the general concern of the Bar Association, such speculation might be enough to increase the concerns of the objective observer. Accordingly, the Court's concluded that the applicants and their lawyers could reasonably have had grounds to believe that their conversations in the CFECC lawyer-client meeting room were not confidential.   The lack of any aperture in the glass partition rendered the lawyers' task even more difficult.   Moreover, the glass partition was a general measure affecting indiscriminately everyone in the remand centre, regardless of their personal circumstances. The applicants had had no criminal record, had been prosecuted for non-violent offences and nothing in the file confirmed the existence of a security risk. Furthermore, in exceptional circumstances where supervision of lawyer-client meetings would have been justified, visual supervision of those meetings would have been sufficient.   The Court concluded that the impossibility for the applicants to discuss their defence with their lawyers without being separated by a glass partition was in violation of Article 5 § 4   ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Press contacts Emma Hellyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 15) Stéphanie Klein (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54) Beverley Jacobs (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 21) Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30)     The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.   [1] Under Article 43 of the Convention, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 ‑ member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer. [2] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.