CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 10 juillet 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   493 10.7.2007   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT PALADI v. MOLDOVA   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Paladi v. Moldova (application no. 39806/05).   The Court held: unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights; unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 5 § 1 (right to liberty and security) of the Convention; by six votes to one, that there had been a violation of Article 34 (right of individual petition).   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court awarded Mr Paladi 2,080   euros (EUR) in respect of pecuniary damage, EUR 15,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 4,000 for costs and expenses. The remainder of the application was declared inadmissible. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts The applicant, Ion Paladi, is a Moldovan national who was born in 1953 and lives in Chişinău. He was Deputy Mayor of Chişinău and a university lecturer. In 2006 he was declared as having a second-degree disability.   On 24 September 2004 Mr Paladi was taken into custody on a 30-day detention order and placed in the Centre for Fighting Economic Crime and Corruption (the “CFECC”) on suspicion of abuse of position and power. He stayed there until 25 February 2005 when he was transferred to Remand Centre no. 3 of the Ministry of Justice in Chişinău.   Mr Paladi suffers from a number of serious illnesses (diabetes, angina, heart failure, hypertension, chronic bronchitis, pancreatitis and hepatitis) and, whilst in detention, was examined by various doctors who all recommended medical supervision. Certain doctors considered that operations, which could only be carried out in specialised units, were necessary.   According to Mr Paladi, the CFECC had no medical staff until late February 2005. He also claimed that he, his wife and lawyer had complained to the authorities about the insufficient medical treatment, but had only been able to obtain sporadic medical visits and assistance in emergencies.   A medical report was drawn up in March 2005 and Mr   Paladi was transferred to a prison hospital. Whilst there, on 20 May 2005, a neurologist from the Republican Neurology Centre of the Ministry of Health (the “RNC”) recommended transferring him to an institution where he could receive hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy. The director of the hospital informed the domestic courts a total of seven times between May and September 2005 that the HBO therapy had not been carried out because his hospital did not have the necessary equipment for such specialised neurological treatment.   On 7 and 15 September a medical board of the Ministry of Health examined Mr Paladi and, at their recommendation, Centru District Court on 20 September 2005 ordered his transfer to the RNC. Mr Paladi received HBO therapy, which produced positive results, at the Republican Clinical Hospital (the “RCH”) and that hospital prescribed a continuation of the therapy until 28 November. In the meantime, however, the RNC had written a letter on 9 November stating that Mr Paladi’s condition had stabilised and recommending his release from hospital. No reference having been made to HBO therapy in that letter, on 10 November the district court ordered the applicant’s transfer back to the prison hospital.   On the evening of 10 November the European Court of Human Rights indicated by facsimile to the Moldovan Government an interim measure under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, stating that the applicant should not be transferred from the RNC until the Court had had the opportunity to examine the case. On 11 November 2005 a Deputy Registrar of the Court tried unsuccessfully several times to contact by telephone the Government Agent’s Office in Moldova. Mr Paladi was transferred to the prison hospital on that same day. Finally, following requests by the applicant’s lawyer and the Agent of the Government, the district court ordered the applicant to be transferred back to the RNC on 14 November. The applicant alleged, corroborated by a television news report, that he was made to wait six hours before being admitted to the RNC. According to the doctors, that delay was due to the fact that Mr   Paladi had arrived at the RNC without a medical file.   Between 5 October 2004 and 11 October 2005 Mr Paladi made a total of 10 requests to be released, which were all refused, notably because the courts considered that he might reoffend or abscond, tamper with evidence or intimidate witnesses. On 1 June 2005, the examination of his case was suspended because he was considered as being unfit to attend hearings. Ultimately, on 15 December 2005, Mr Paladi’s detention pending trial was replaced with an obligation not to leave the country.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 9 November 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 Lawrence Early , Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaints   Relying on Article 3, Mr Paladi complained in particular that, during his detention, he had not been given appropriate medical assistance. Further relying on Article 5 §§ 1, 3 and 4, he also complained in particular about there having been no relevant reasons for prolonging his detention pending trial and about the length of time taken and refusals to examine his requests for release. Lastly, he alleged that the authorities had failed to comply swiftly with the Court’s interim measures ordered under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, in breach of Article 34.   Decision of the Court   Article 3 The Court considered that it was clear that Mr Paladi had been in need of constant medical supervision, without which his health had been at risk.   Mr Paladi complained that that supervision had been inadequate in the CFECC, a fact which was indeed confirmed in the Government’s submissions which stated that the applicant had only been visited by doctors approximately once a month. The Court therefore found that he had not been given appropriate medical supervision and assistance whilst at that detention centre.   The Court noted that Mr Paladi’s transfer to the RNC for neurological treatment, on the recommendation of a highly-qualified doctor whose independence had not been called into question, had been unreasonably delayed (by four-months) because the domestic courts had taken too long to obtain a medical opinion and had not taken any measures to speed up the process. The domestic courts themselves had considered the applicant to be unfit to participate in its hearings as of 1 June 2005. It had not, however, considered it necessary to allow him to start a course of medical treatment. It was also particularly striking that the medical board had only seen the applicant for the first time on 7 September 2005.   Mr Paladi had received HBO therapy in the RCH, which the Court therefore considered to have been the competent medical authority to decide whether that therapy should have been continued. Confronted with two divergent opinions, the district court had based its decision to transfer the applicant back to the prison hospital purely on the letter from the RNC. The Court was further struck by the contrast between the urgency with which the domestic court had decided to order Mr Paladi’s transfer back to the hospital and the delay of four months with which the same court had dealt with the initial recommendation for his transfer to the RNC. The HBO treatment, which had already been shown to give positive results, having been interrupted, the domestic court had further undermined the effectiveness of Mr Paladi’s belated treatment.   The Court found that that delay and then the interruption to HBO treatment had caused stress and anxiety to Mr Paladi which had gone beyond the level inherent in any deprivation of liberty. The Court therefore concluded that the lack of proper medical assistance at the CFECC remand centre, the incomplete treatment at the prison hospital after 20 May 2005 and the abrupt termination of Mr Paladi’s HBO treatment each amounted to a violation of Article   3.   Article 5 §§ 1, 3 and 4 The Court found that Mr Paladi’s detention pending trial after 22 October 2004, when the court order for his detention had expired, had not been based on any legal provision. Recalling that it had found a similar finding as in two previous cases raising similar issues and that no element in the file led it to reach a different conclusion in the applicant’s case, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 5 § 1 in the period after 22   October 2004.   The Court further held, unanimously, that it was not necessary to examine separately Mr   Paladi’s complaints under Article 5 §§ 3 and 4.   Article 34 There had been serious deficiencies in the State’s compliance with the Court’s interim measures: starting with the absence of officials to answer urgent calls from the Registry; continuing with a lack of action taken between the morning of 11 November 2005 and the afternoon of 14 November 2005; and, ending with the refusal for six hours to admit Mr   Paladi to the RNC despite the Court’s interim measures and the domestic court’s decision. Those deficiencies had been aggravated by both inadequacies in domestic law and practice and in organisation of the Government Agent’s Office, which had not ensured that the hospital authorities had had at their disposal all the necessary medical documents.   The Court considered that that failure to comply as a matter of urgency with the interim measure had in itself jeopardised Mr Paladi’s ability to pursue his application before the Court and, given the very serious risk to which Mr Paladi had been exposed, the Court therefore found that there had been a violation of Article 34.   ***   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) 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.