CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 10 avril 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 } .s9793A85B { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-indent:14.2pt } .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   220 10.4.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT BARTA v. HUNGARY   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Barta v. Hungary (application no. 26137/04).   The Court held unanimously that there had been: no violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights as regards the alleged ill-treatment of the applicant by a police officer; and, a violation of Article 3 of the Convention as regards the lack of an effective investigation .   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court awarded the applicant 3,000   euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 3,500 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicant, Sophie Barta, is a British national who was born in 1965 and now lives in London. At the time, Ms Barta and her mother, Ms E. Rhodes, ran a shelter for dogs and cats in Bőny (Hungary). Ms Rhodes speaks Hungarian; her daughter does not.   In October 2002 Győr Police Department decided to call in the applicant and her mother for questioning, apparently in the context of an investigation into allegations that the animals in the shelter had created a nuisance in the neighbourhood. The local police officer, P.Z.H., who was known to both women, was asked to escort them to the police department.   On the morning of 16 October 2002 P.Z.H. went to the shelter. Ms Rhodes refused to go with him and set her dogs on him, before grabbing his truncheon and locking herself in the house. Ms Barta, who had been watching and taking photographs from an upstairs window, then came downstairs.   According to the Hungarian Government, Ms Barta hit P.Z.H. several times with her camera.   They both went inside the house, where Ms   Barta locked the door from the inside and sat on the key. P.Z.H. attempted to retrieve the key by immobilising Ms   Barta’s arm.   According to Ms Barta, P.Z.H. forced open the door, bashing it against her stomach and shoulder. While she was doubled up in pain, P.Z.H. repeatedly hit her with the truncheon on her neck, back and shoulders.   All three were taken to hospital. The medical report stated that Ms Barta had a bruise on the back of her right hand, scrapes on her back and that her shoulder had been distended. It also reported that P.Z.H.’s left shoulder and collar bone were tender, part of a finger nail on his left hand had been torn off and that he had a scrape on his right hand.   A further medical report was requested during the subsequent criminal proceedings brought against Ms Barta and her mother for violence against an official. The report, concentrating entirely on P.Z.H.’s injuries, despite Ms Barta’s request for all parties to be examined, concluded that P.Z.H.’s injuries had probably resulted from Ms Barta hitting him with the camera and from the struggle for the door key. It considered Ms Barta’s version less plausible, but not impossible.   On 15 January 2003 Ms Rhodes informed the prosecution of a third individual, a Romanian national, who had been inside the house at the time of the incident and might have seen the events from the roof window. No attempt was made to find that person.   On 13 June 2005 Ms Barta and her mother were acquitted of committing violence against an official, but the judgment was quashed and the case is currently still pending.   In the meantime, they filed a criminal complaint against P.Z.H. which was given the same reference number as the complaint against them. The investigation into their complaint was ultimately closed by the public prosecutor, relying solely on evidence produced in the parallel criminal proceedings. Ms Barta appealed unsuccessfully.   Independently of those proceedings Ms Barta requested another medical report. It concluded that the injuries to Ms Barta’s shoulder and back did not correlate with P.Z.H.’s version but had probably originated either from punches with a hard object (like a truncheon) or from being repeatedly banged against a wall. Concerning P.Z.H.’s injuries, the report concluded that they could have been caused either as he had described or as explained by Ms   Barta.   On 20 October 2003 the applicant lodged a supplementary private bill of indictment against P.Z.H. for ill-treatment in official proceedings with the county regional court. She also complained, among other things, that, despite her repeated requests, P.Z.H. had never been heard as a suspect and that the investigation authorities had never given a plausible explanation for her injuries. On 3 December 2003 the court held that there was no reason to depart from the prosecution authorities’ previous decisions to dismiss Ms   Barta’s complaint on account of lack of evidence and the fact that P.Z.H. had acted lawfully in the face of aggression and police resistance.   The original charges of disorderly conduct against Ms Barta and her mother were closed on 16 May 2003 due to lack of evidence.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 25 May 2004.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Françoise Tulkens (Belgian), President , András Baka (Hungarian), Riza Türmen (Turkish), Mindia Ugrekhelidze (Georgian), Vladimiro Zagrebelsky (Italian), Danutė Jočienė (Lithuanian), Dragoljub Popović (Serbian), judges ,   and also Françoise Elens-Passos , Deputy Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaints   Relying on Article 3, Ms Barta alleged that she had been ill-treated by the police and that the investigation into her complaint of ill-treatment had been inadequate.   Decision of the Court   Article 3   The alleged ill-treatment The Court considered that the injuries suffered by Ms Barta had been sufficiently serious to amount to ill-treatment within the meaning of Article 3.   The Court observed that the parties did not dispute that those injuries had been caused by P.Z.H. during Ms Barta’s arrest. It was not contested either that P.Z.H. had used force in order to carry out the arrest which Ms Barta and her mother had resisted. However, the parties disagreed as to whether the police officer had acted lawfully.   The Court noted that, under section 112(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, it was legal to summon Ms Barta and her mother orally. It also noted that Ms Barta had not attempted to clarify the situation by asking her mother to translate. Instead, she had immediately obstructed P.Z.H., who, in uniform, she knew to be a police officer. In those circumstances, the Court saw no reason to disagree with the domestic authorities’ conclusion that P.Z.H. had acted lawfully.   In deciding whether P.Z.H. had exceeded the necessary use of force during the arrest, the   Court noted that it found it impossible to establish beyond a reasonable doubt whether Ms Barta’s injuries had been sustained either when P.Z.H. had forcibly opened the door of the house – a necessary measure in the circumstances – or when he had allegedly beaten her.   The Court noted that Ms Barta and her mother had been arrested in the course of an operation giving rise to unexpected developments and that there had been nothing in the case file indicating that P.Z.H. should have expected resistance. Furthermore, it had to be taken into account that Ms Barta and her mother had resisted him by having refused to comply with his verbal requests, by having set their dogs on him and by having resisted his attempts to apprehend Ms Barta.   The Court did not doubt that Ms Barta had suffered injuries as a result of the incident but held that their nature did not show beyond a reasonable doubt that the use of force against her had been excessive.   Drawing attention to the fact that Ms Barta had lacked critical judgment of her own behaviour when faced with the legitimate requirements of a law enforcement officer and concluding that P.Z.H. had resorted to physical force as a result of that behaviour, the Court held that there had been no violation of Article 3 as regards the alleged ill-treatment by the police.   The investigation The Court considered that the medical evidence, Ms Barta’s testimony and the fact that her injuries had been sustained in the course of police action gave rise to a reasonable suspicion that she might have been subjected to ill-treatment and that it was the Government’s duty to carry out an effective official investigation capable of identifying and punishing those responsible for her injuries.   The Court found it to be a serious shortcoming of the investigation carried out that the medical expert appointed had only given an opinion on the possible causes of P.Z.H.’s injuries, and not Ms Barta’s, despite her repeated requests. That shortcoming was all the more obvious given the opinion of the medical expert commissioned by Ms Barta, who stated that Ms Barta’s version of events, and not P.Z.H.’s, had been plausible.   Furthermore, the Court found that, Ms Barta’s complaint having had the same reference number as the one concerning the charge against her and the authorities’ not having heard P.Z.H. as a suspect or located the individual who had allegedly stayed at her house, showed the authorities’ reluctance to carry out an effective and thorough investigation.   Finally, the Court acknowledged that Ms Barta’s complaint against the Public Prosecutor’s decisions as well as her private bill of indictment had been dismissed without any factual reasons, evaluation of her medical expert’s opinion or reflection on any of her arguments. Neither the Chief Prosecutor’s Office nor the county regional court had gone any further than to point out the mere fact that Ms Barta had obstructed the police and that that, in itself, had justified the force applied.   Consequently, in view of the lack of a thorough and effective investigation into Ms Barta’s arguable claim that she was ill-treated by a police officer, the Court found that there had been a violation of Article 3.   ***   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.