CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 3 mai 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 } .s33165EBA { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s6B505E72 { margin:0pt; padding-left:0pt } .sD711EC90 { margin-left:31.52pt; 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 } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS   279 3.5.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT 97 MEMBERS OF THE GLDANI CONGREGATION OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES & 4 OTHERS v. GEORGIA   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of 97 Members of the Gldani Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses & 4 Others v. Georgia (application no. 71156/01).   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 on account of the treatment inflicted on 42 of the applicants and on the children of six of the applicants; no violation of Article 3 in respect of the treatment inflicted on 59 of the applicants; a violation of Article 3 in respect of the authorities’ reaction and the action taken in response to the complaints of 42 of the applicants; a violation of Article 9 (right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion) in respect of 96 applicants; a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) taken together with Articles 3 and 9.   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicants the sums set out in detail at the end of the judgment.   The judgment is available in English and French.   1.     Principal facts   The applicants are 97 members of the Gldani Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, together with Vladimer Kokosadze, the Congregation’s spokesperson, Nino Lelashvili, Alexi Khitarishvili and Leila Dzhikurashvili, who are also members of the Congregation.     The case concerns an attack in October 1999 against members of the Congregation by a group of Orthodox believers, led by Basil Mkalavishvili (known as “Father Basil”).   Father Basil was a defrocked priest in the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Georgia. He had been accused of various acts of physical aggression against members of the Orthodox Church, and of insulting the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia; he had also boasted to the Georgian media about having organised a series of attacks against Jehovah’s Witnesses.   Towards noon on 17 October 1999 dozens of individuals identified by the applicants as a group of Father Basil’s supporters, surrounded and entered the theatre in which 120 members of the Congregation were meeting. The attack was filmed by one of Father Basil’s supporters.     When the group of Father Basil’s supporters burst into the meeting room, shouting and waving sticks and large iron crosses, several members of the Congregation succeeded in escaping, but about sixty of them remained blocked in the hall; the Jehovah’s Witnesses, including women and children, were violently assaulted by the attackers, who punched and kicked them, and struck them with sticks and iron crosses; some of the women were pulled to the ground by their hair, pushed down staircases or whipped with belts. A member of the Congregation also had his head shaved while those holding him in place recited a prayer.   When the members of the Congregation managed to leave the hall, they found themselves surrounded by a cordon of Father Basil’s supporters, who searched them and then threw any symbol of their beliefs (Bibles, religious literature, tracts, etc.) into a large fire. Personal effects were also removed from their owners in this process.   Several individuals who had succeeded in escaping the attack attempted to alert the police. Thus, several applicants went to the police station in Gldani micro-district III: the police officers registered one applicant’s statement but decided not to intervene; another applicant was informed by the head of the police station that “in the attackers’ place, he would have given the Jehovah’s Witnesses an even worse time”. The police finally went to the site of the attack.   At the end of the attack, 16 people were admitted to hospital; they were mainly suffering from head injuries and headaches, and had bruising to the face. Another 44 made statements concerning the attacks to which they had been subjected.   On the same day and for the next few days, the national television channels Rustavi-2 and Kavkasia broadcast recordings of the attack from which Father Basil, Mr Ivanidze and other members of their group were clearly identifiable. Their names were also provided to the relevant authorities by the victims. It did not appear from that recording that the applicants responded to the acts of violence against them. The recording also showed a fire with the burning books, with Father Basil and his supporters praying and singing, and also contained an interview in which Father Basil, standing with this fire in the background, expressed his satisfaction and explains the validity of his actions.   On the day following the attack, 42 applicants lodged a complaint. Criminal proceedings were opened, but only 11 applicants were recognised as civil parties in the case; the remaining 31 applicants never received a reply to their complaint. As to the complaints lodged by the 11 applicants who were granted civil party status, the case was transferred between the various departments of the prosecution service and the police. The proceedings were suspended on several occasions, on the ground that it was impossible to identify the perpetrators of the attack.   The police investigator responsible for the case stated that, on account of his Orthodox faith, he could not be impartial in conducting the investigation. During that investigation, he organised an identification parade, in the course of which one of the applicants recognised Mr Nikolozishvili and another person as those who had attacked him; the police officer decided to place that applicant under examination and no follow-up action was taken with regard to the identification. Sent for trial with two of Father Basil’s supporters who were suspected of having burnt the religious literature, the applicant in question was convicted of having committed acts endangering public order, although the charge against Father Basil’s two supporters was sent for further investigation; that investigation was never completed. The applicant concerned was eventually acquitted.   From October 1999 to November 2002 138 violent attacks were carried out against the Jehovah’s Witnesses and 784 complaints were lodged with the Georgian authorities. No careful and serious investigation was carried out into any of those complaints.   Between 2000 and 2002 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the UN Committee against Torture and several NGOs condemned the violent attacks committed against religious minorities in Georgia and particularly against the Jehovah’s Witnesses.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged on 29 June 2001 and declared partly admissible on 6 July 2004.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Jean-Paul Costa (French), President , András Baka (Hungarian), Loukis Loucaides (Cypriot), Corneliu Bîrsan (Romanian), Karel Jungwiert (Czech), Mindia Ugrekhelidze (Georgian), Antonella Mularoni (San Marinese), judges , and also Sally Dollé , Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaints   The applicants complained that they had been attacked by a group of extremist Orthodox believers, who had beaten them, and that no effective investigation had been carried out in that respect. They relied on Article 3 (prohibition or degrading or inhuman treatment) Article   9 (right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion), Article 10 (freedom of expression), Article 11 (freedom of association), Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination).       Decision of the Court   Article 3   As to the treatment inflicted on the applicants The Court noted that the allegations of ill-treatment made by ten applicants were corroborated by their medical records and the video recording of the attack.   In addition, 15 other applicants had provided precise descriptions of the ill-treatment to which they had been subjected, and those descriptions had not been challenged by the Georgian Government. Accordingly, the Court considered that, with regard to those 25 applicants, the treatment inflicted on them could be described as inhuman.   The Court also considered that the six applicants whose children had been beaten up were indirect victims of the inhuman treatment inflicted on their children.   Furthermore, with regard to 14 other applicants whose statements did not specify the nature and gravity of the treatment inflicted, the Court considered that the video recording showed that they had been subjected to degrading treatment. In that respect, it attached importance to the fact that the attack had been filmed by one of the attackers. The broadcasting of the video on two national television channels over several days had enabled a wide public to view the violence to which the applicants had been subjected, including the religiously inspired debasement inflicted on the applicant whose head had been shaved.   The Court therefore concluded that there had been a violation of Article 3 with regard to 45 of the applicants.   In contrast, the Court held that there had been no violation of Article 3 with regard to the 16 applicants who stated that they had escaped the attack and the 37 applicants who had not complained to the Georgian authorities about the treatment to which they had been subjected.   As to the authorities’ reaction and the action taken in response to 42 applicants’ complaints The Court considered that it had not been shown that the authorities were aware that Father Basil was planning to carry out the attack in question. On the other hand, it noted that, after being informed, the police officers had not acted with diligence.   At the same time, 31 applicants received no response to their complaints and 11 other complaints were unsuccessful. The investigator responsible for the case had made clear his bias from the start of the investigation and the identification of several attackers resulted in the victim in question being placed under examination.   The Court regretted that the Georgian Government continued to claim that it had been impossible to identify the perpetrators of the violence. Justifying the authorities’ inaction in that way was all the more shocking in that the police who had gone to the site of the events had not arrested a single attacker; that, on the very day of the attack, Father Basil and Mr Nikolozishvili had been present at the police station beside one of the victims, who had been the only person arrested; that the television channels broadcast entire sequences illustrating the violence committed against the applicants; that the recording of one of those broadcasts in the Court’s possession showed very clearly not only the identity of Father Basil and Mr Ivanidze, but also makes it possible to identify the majority of the attackers; that, in an interview broadcast the following day, Father Basil, questioned in front of the fire on which the applicants’ religious literature was burning, expressed his satisfaction with regard to his actions and explained their validity.   To sum up, the Court noted that the police had refused to intervene promptly at the scene of the incident in order to protect the applicants concerned and the children of some of them from ill-treatment and that the applicants were subsequently faced with total indifference on the part of the authorities who, for no valid reason, refused to apply the law in their case. Such an attitude on the part of authorities under a duty to investigate criminal offences was, in the Court’s opinion, tantamount to undermining the effectiveness of any other remedies that may have existed.   The Court therefore concluded that there had been a violation of Article 3 with regard to 42 applicants.   Article 9   The Court noted that, through their lack of action, the Georgian authorities had failed in their duty to adopt the necessary measures to ensure that the group of Orthodox extremists lead by Father Basil would tolerate the existence of the applicants’ religious community and enable them to enjoy free exercise of their right to freedom of religion. It therefore concluded that there had been a violation of Article 9 in respect of 96 applicants, five other applicants having been unidentifiable.   Article 14 taken together with Articles 3 and 9   The Court considered that the comments and attitudes of the State employees who were alerted about the attack or subsequently instructed to conduct the investigation could not be considered compatible with the principle of equality of every person before the law. No justification for that discriminatory treatment in respect of the applicants had been put forward by the Georgian Government. Indeed, the authorities’ attitude had enabled Father Basil to continue to advocate hatred through the media and to pursue acts of religiously-motivated violence, accompanied by his supporters, while alleging that the latter enjoyed the unofficial support of the authorities, which had suggested that the State had been complicit with the criminals.   The Court therefore concluded that there had been a violation of Article 14 taken together with Articles 3 and 9.   Other articles   The Court considered it unnecessary to examine separately the complaints under Articles 13, 10 and 11.   ***   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.