CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 19 juin 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 } .s1C7BEF1E { margin-left:28.52pt; padding-left:7.48pt; font-family:serif } .sFE832CA2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-left:18pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s83BE5C30 { font-family:Arial; font-size:8pt; vertical-align:super } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .s76CF415B { page-break-before:always; clear:both } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .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   427 19.06.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT CIORAP v. MOLDOVA   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Ciorap v. Moldova (application no. 12066/02).   The Court held unanimously that there had been:   a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding Mr   Ciorap’s conditions of detention; a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture) regarding Mr   Ciorap’s force-feeding; a violation of Article 6 (right to a fair trial); and two violations of Article 8 (right to respect for correspondence and for private and family life).   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court awarded the applicant 20,000 euros (EUR) for non-pecuniary damage and EUR 1,150 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicant, Tudor Ciorap, is a Moldovan national who was born in 1965 and is currently in detention in Chişinău. He is a second degree invalid and has been diagnosed with “mosaic schizophrenia”.   He worked for “Social Amnesty”, an NGO specialising in providing legal help to detainees and claimed that, as a result, he was persecuted. He was arrested on 23 October 2000 following proceedings brought against him on charges of fraud. He was subsequently transferred to the Ministry of Justice’s remand centre in Chişinău (now known as prison no.   13). He has been convicted of a number of crimes but is apparently still remanded on other charges.   According to the applicant, his conditions of detention were inhuman on account of overcrowding, shortage of beds, damp, rodents, parasitic insects, lack of proper ventilation or access to daylight, restricted electricity and water and the detention centre’s poor quantity and quality of food. He particularly referred to cell no. 17a, which measured 12m 2 and contained 10 detainees, and cell no. 11, where he was transferred on 2 August 2001, which he had to share with five other detainees, some of whom had infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, and where, because the cell had two beds, he had to sleep on the floor.   The Government disagreed in particular about which cells Mr Ciorap had been detained in, the number of detainees with whom he had had to share cells and his quota of personal space. The only cell the Government could give specific information about was cell no. 116 (where the applicant was detained at the time of the Government’s filing of its observations to the Court) which measured 10 m 2 and which the applicant shared with one other detainee.   Mr Ciorap complained to various authorities concerning his detention conditions. He received a reply in December 2003 from the Penitentiaries’ Department which confirmed the presence of parasitic insects in the remand centre, which was also “periodically overcrowded” and resulted in increased lice infestation and skin disease.   During his detention, Mr Ciorap has gone on hunger-strike on many occasions. In the second half of 1995, he went on hunger-strike at least once a month. It had even resulted in him being put into solitary confinement for two separate 10-day periods in November and December 1995.   On 1 August 2001 he went on hunger-strike again to protest against alleged violations of his rights and those of his family. He was kept under medical supervision and, on 24 August, a doctor found his health to have deteriorated and ordered force-feeding, in accordance with Article 33 of the Law on pre-trial detention and a special instruction. Published copies of that instruction and the prison regulations were not available. A copy of the prison regulations, which did not contain any provision on force-feeding, was, however, sent to the applicant exceptionally in December 2003.   Between 24 August and 10 September 2001 Mr Ciorap was force-fed a total of seven times. On each occasion doctors noted down remarks such as “force-feeding was administered in accordance with instructions (800ml of milk and 50g of sugar)” and that his health was “relatively satisfactory” or “satisfactory”. Despite his hunger-strike he was taken to Court on 4 and 13 September.   Mr Ciorap ended his hunger-strike on 4 October 2001.   In October 2001 Mr Ciorap lodged a complaint about the pain and humiliation of the force-feeding and requested to be fed milk or to be given vitamins through an intra-venous drip. He described the force-feeding process as follows: he was always handcuffed, even though he never physically resisted. The prison staff forced him to open his mouth by pulling his hair, gripping his neck and stepping on his feet until he could no longer bear the pain and opened his mouth. His mouth was then fixed in an open position by means of a metal mouth-widener and his tongue was pulled out of his mouth with a pair of metal tongs. A hard tube was inserted as far as his stomach through which liquidised food was introduced, provoking, on some occasions, sharp pain. When the metal holder was removed from his mouth, he bled, he could not feel his tongue and was unable to speak. The instruments used for his force-feeding were not fitted with single-use, soft protection layers to prevent pain and infection. The applicant claimed that, as a result, one of his teeth had been broken and he had contracted an abdominal infection.   Evidence was given in court corroborating Mr Ciorap’s description: C.S., a nurse who personally witnessed the force-feeding, stated that the applicant had not always resisted and no handcuffing had been necessary on such occasions; and, V.B., a detainee in the same remand centre, said that he had seen blood on the applicant and on other detainees after they had been force-fed.   On 15 February 2005 Centru District Court rejected the applicant’s claims, finding that his force-feeding was based on medical necessity and, given his resistance, handcuffing and other restrictive measures were necessary to protect him from danger to his health and life. Ultimately, the applicant’s cassation appeal lodged with the Supreme Court of Justice was not examined by that court because he had not paid the court fees.   Mr Ciorap further submitted that, from 2001 to 2003, a number of letters addressed to him personally from law-enforcement agencies, human rights organisations and even a psychiatric hospital had been censored by the prison administration as they bore either a prison stamp or other inscription.   Finally, he brought further court proceedings against the prison administration on account of visits from his relatives and girlfriend having been severely restricted, visits on some occasions having been denied for up to a year. In particular, he was not allowed to have any physical contact with them (at least for one year in 2003) except on a few occasions and had to communicate with them through a glass partition, making privacy impossible.   In a final judgment of 21 April 2004 the Supreme Court of Justice refused to examine that request for more regular visits and in better conditions, notably on account of security reasons as outlined in the prison rules.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 5 December 2001 and declared partly admissible on 11 October 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), Ljiljana Mijović (citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina), judges , and also Fatoş Aracı , Deputy Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaints   Relying on Article 3 and Article 6 § 1, Mr Ciorap complained about his conditions of detention, force-feeding and the refusal to examine his complaint about the force-feeding because he had not paid the court fees. He also complained about censorship of his correspondence, refusal to provide him with acceptable conditions to meet visitors, in breach of Article 8, and lack of access to internal prison regulations, in breach of Article   10 (freedom of expression).   Decision of the Court   Article 3 as regards the conditions of detention   The parties had disagreed in all respects apart from the fact that Mr Ciorap had been detained in cell no. 17a. According to the applicant, there had been 10 other detainees in that cell, a claim not disputed by the Government, which had merely noted that that cell measured 12m 2 . The Court therefore concluded that each detainee in that cell had just over 1m 2 of space, which was clearly unacceptable.   The Government had denied that the applicant had been detained in cell no. 11, whereas the Court noted that some of the letters addressed to him had been directed by the prison authorities to that same cell. The Government not having given any details regarding the size of cell no. 11 or the number of detainees it could accommodate, the Court assumed that the applicant’s account was correct and that there had been more detainees than beds. The Court doubted that the applicant could have had 5m 2 of space as suggested by the Government throughout his five-year period of detention.   The Court further noted that the applicant’s complaint about overcrowding and poor quantity and quality of food corresponded to a report made by the Council of Europe’s CPT (European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment) on a visit to prison no. 13 in 2004.   Moreover, in its letter of 29 December 2003, the Penitentiaries’ Department had even conceded that the prison had occasionally been overpopulated and infested with parasitic insects.   In light of the above, the Court found that the conditions of Mr Ciorap’s prolonged period of detention had been inhuman, in particular as a result of extreme overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and the low quantity and quality of food. There had, accordingly, been a violation of Article 3.   Article 3 as regards the force-feeding   The Court reiterated that a measure which was of therapeutic necessity from the point of view of established principles of medicine could not, in principle, be regarded as inhuman and degrading. The same could be said about force-feeding when aimed at saving the life of a person on hunger-strike. The medical necessity must nevertheless have been convincingly shown, the procedural guarantees complied with and the manner in which the force-feeding was carried out must not have exceeded the threshold of the minimum level of severity under Article 3.   The Court observed that the applicant had already been on hunger-strikes before 1 August 2001 and that, on those occasions, he had not been force-fed and his life or health had not been considered in danger. On the contrary, the two 10-day solitary confinement periods reflected the prison administration’s position that, not only had the applicant’s life not been in danger, but that he had had to be held in harsher than normal conditions, as punishment.   Those sanctions confirmed that the applicant’s hunger-strikes had been considered by the prison authorities to be acts of disobedience which had required a serious response. The domestic courts also appeared to have taken a similar view. Such an attitude corresponded to the applicant’s claim that his force-feeding had not been aimed at protecting his life but rather at discouraging him from continuing his protest.   The Court found it strange that the applicant’s condition had been considered serious enough to warrant force-feeding in September 2001 but had, at the same time, been allowed to attend court hearings on 4 and 13 September. It also observed that, despite his alleged weakness as a result of his prolonged refusal to take food for 24 days – interjected by seven force-feedings – and despite his abdominal infection, he was deemed fit to continue hunger-striking for another 24 days, until 4 October, without any apparent need for further force-feeding.   The Court noted the domestic courts’ finding that there was sufficient evidence of a medical necessity to force-feed the applicant in order to save his life. However, there had been no medical test or other investigation to justify the doctor’s decision, only simple notes indicating that force feeding had taken place and the type and quantity of food administered. Basic procedural safeguards, as prescribed by Article 33(1) of the Law on pre-trial detention and the special instruction, such as clarifying the reasons for starting and ending force-feeding and noting the composition and quantity of food administered, had not been respected. Moreover, the applicant’s health was each time assessed as “relatively satisfactory” or even “satisfactory” by the duty doctor, which is hardly compatible with a life-threatening condition requiring force-feeding.   The Court was struck by the manner of the force-feeding, including the unchallenged, mandatory handcuffing regardless of any resistance and the severe pain caused by metal instruments to force the applicant to open his mouth and pull out his tongue. V.B.’s statement about having seeing blood on the applicant’s clothes after his force-feeding led the Court to assume that statement to have been true.   The Court finally noted that that there had been a less intrusive alternative to force-feeding, that is to say intra-venous drips, which had not even been considered, despite the applicant’s express request.   The Court concluded that the manner in which the applicant was repeatedly force-fed had not been prompted by valid medical reasons but rather by the intention of forcing the applicant to stop his protest and had been unnecessarily painful and humiliating and could only be considered as torture. Accordingly, there had been a violation of Article 3.   Article 6 § 1   The applicant’s complaint concerned the alleged damage to his health caused by the actions of the authorities. The Court considered that, in accordance with Article 85 (1) of the Code of Civil Procedure, he should have been exempted from paying court fees due to the serious nature of his allegations (torture), regardless of his ability to pay. The Court concluded that the applicant had been denied access to a tribunal and there had, therefore, been a violation of Article 6 § 1.   Article 8: correspondence   The Court concluded that there was clear evidence that at least some of the applicant’s correspondence had been opened by prison administration. Seeing as he had not been given access until December 2003 to the prison rules governing, among other things, the way in which his correspondence was processed, the correct procedures had not been followed and the opening of the applicant’s correspondence had not been “prescribed by law”. There had therefore been a violation of Article 8.   Article 8: private and family life   The Court found that there had been interference with the applicant’s right to meet his visitors in private conditions.   The effect of the long period of time during which the applicant had not been able to have any physical contact with his visitors, the fact that he could only maintain a relationship with them by correspondence and by meeting them in prison and the physical barriers to free discussion created by the glass partition could not be ignored. In the absence of any grounds for such far-reaching restrictions on the applicant’s rights, who was accused of fraud and did not present a security risk, the Court found that the domestic authorities had failed to strike a fair balance between the aims relied on and the applicant’s rights under Article 8. There had, therefore, been a violation of Article 8.   Article 10   Finding that the authorities’ failure to provide the applicant with a copy of the prison rules had already been taken into account when dealing with his complaints under Articles 3 and 8, the Court did not consider it necessary to examine separately the complaint under Article 10.   ***   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.