CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 2 octobre 2008

.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 } .sD711EC90 { margin-left:31.52pt; padding-left:7.48pt; font-family:serif } .s1C7BEF1E { margin-left:28.52pt; padding-left:7.48pt; font-family:serif } .s76CF415B { page-break-before:always; clear:both } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s3DC36BA9 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } .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   682 2.10.2008   Press release issued by the Registrar   The Court finds violations of the prohibition against torture in three Chamber judgments concerning Russia   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing three Chamber judgments [1] - available only in English - in the cases of Akulinin and Babich v. Russia (application no.   5742/02), Belousov v. Russia (no.   1748/02) and Samoylov v. Russia (no.   64398/01).   The Court held unanimously that in all three cases there had been:   a violation of Article   3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the applicants’ ill-treatment by the police; and, a violation of Article   3 on account of the authorities’ inadequate investigation into the applicants’ allegations of ill-treatment.   The Court also held unanimously that in the case of Belousov there had been:   a violation of Article   5 §   1 (right to liberty and security) on account of the lack of a proper record of his detention on 5   December 1999.   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, and in respect of non-pecuniary damage, the Court awarded 10,000   euros   (EUR) to Mr   Samoylov and Mr   Babich, EUR   20,000 to Mr   Akulinin and EUR   30,000 to Mr   Belousov. For costs and expenses, the Court awarded Mr   Akulinin EUR   140 in respect of the domestic proceedings, and EUR   3,500, jointly, to Mr   Akulinin and Mr   Babich in respect of proceedings before the Court.   1.     Principal facts   The applicants are four Russian nationals: Semen Yuryevich Akulinin and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Babich were born in 1983 and 1981 respectively and live in Moscow; Ivan Aleksandrovich Belousov was born in 1973 and lives in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk; Leonid Nikolayevich Samoylov was born in 1963 and lives in Zelenograd. Akulinin and Babich   On 14   September 2000 the two applicants were arrested separately on suspicion of car hijacking. They both allege that they were severely beaten and subjected to ill-treatment in order to secure a confession.   Following a subsequent hospital examination the first applicant was diagnosed with a compression fracture of the 1st and 2nd vertebrae and the second applicant was diagnosed with injuries to the right side of the chest and neck. The first applicant was suffering from severe back pain, for which he was prescribed treatment and given a medical corset. He wore the corset and underwent medical treatment for approximately four months.   The applicants complained unsuccessfully to the Kuntsevo district prosecutor and their lawyers complained to the Kuntsevo District Court.   On 28 May 2001 Kuntsevo District Court found the applicants guilty of aggravated car theft and sentenced them to three years’ imprisonment. As regards the allegations of police brutality, the District Court noted that the investigating authority had conducted an inquiry into the applicants’ complaints about the beatings and had decided not to bring criminal proceedings because the allegations had not been proven.   On appeal, the Moscow City Court upheld the conviction, reduced the applicants’ sentence to two years’ imprisonment and ordered the first applicant’s conditional release, noting that his injury, namely a compression fracture of the 1st and 2nd vertebrae, warranted his release. The City Court held that the applicants’ complaints about the beatings had been “unfounded because these allegations were examined by the prosecutor’s office and then by the [District] Court, and were correctly dismissed because they had not been proven”.   Belousov   On a visit to Moscow on 5 December 1999, following a television interview, the applicant was arrested by police officers. He sustained injuries while in custody which resulted in his remaining in hospital for five days and in two months’ sick leave. In February 2000 he was issued with a second-degree disability certificate. The applicant claimed that he had been beaten and subjected to ill-treatment by drunken police officers. The Government did not dispute the reality of his injuries.   Criminal proceedings brought against the police officers concerned were discontinued and re-opened on different occasions in 2000. In 2006 they were re-opened and again discontinued. That decision was quashed in January 2007 and it appears that the proceedings are still pending.   Samoylov   On 5 February 1999 the applicant was arrested on suspicion of burglary. He claims that while in police custody he was beaten with a view to obtaining a confession. He alleges that the policemen cuffed his hands behind his back, dropped him on the floor, and applied electric shocks to his neck, kidney and liver areas and private parts. They kicked him in the stomach, put him in a chair, and beat his head with a document file until he fainted.   He was then remanded in custody. On his admission to prison the doctor on duty observed injuries on his body. He sent the applicant to a first-aid point to record the injuries.     On 5 October 1999 the applicant was convicted of burglary and sentenced them to four years and four months’ imprisonment. The trial court found his allegation of ill-treatment unsubstantiated. His conviction was upheld on appeal.   With regard to the allegations of ill-treatment, three subsequent attempts to have criminal proceedings brought against the policemen concerned failed.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application in the case of Akulinin and Babich was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 15   January 2002 and in the case of Belousov on 24   July 2000. The application in the case of Samoylov was lodged with the Court on 14   June 2000.   Judgment was given by Chambers of seven judges, composed as follows:   Akulinin and Babich and Belousov   Peer Lorenzen (Danish), President , Rait Maruste (Estonian), Volodymyr Butkevych (Ukrainian), Anatoly Kovler (Russian), Mark Villiger (Swiss) [2] , Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (citizen of “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”), Zdravka Kalaydjieva (Bulgarian), judges , and also Claudia Westerdiek , Section Registrar .   Samoylov   Peer Lorenzen (Danish), President , Rait Maruste (Estonian), Volodymyr Butkevych (Ukrainian), Anatoly Kovler (Russian), Mark Villiger (Swiss) [3] , Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre (Monegasque), Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (citizen of “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”), judges , and also Claudia Westerdiek , Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgments [4]   Complaints   Relying on Article   3 of the Convention (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment), all four applicants alleged that they had been subjected to ill-treatment by the police and that the investigations into their allegations had been inadequate. Mr   Samoylov also complained that the investigation into his allegations of ill-treatment was ineffective contrary to Article   13, and Mr   Belousov alleged that his detention at the police station on 5   December 1999 had been unlawful in breach of Article   5 §   1.   Decision of the Court   Akulinin and Babich   Article 3   Bearing in mind the authorities’ obligation to account for injuries caused to persons within their control in custody, and in the absence of a convincing and plausible explanation by the Government in the case under review, the Court considered that it could draw inferences from the Government’s conduct and found it established to the standard of proof required in the Convention proceedings that the injuries sustained by the applicants were the result of the treatment of which they complained and for which the Government bore responsibility.   (a) Adequacy of the investigation   The Court found that the investigation carried out into the applicants’ allegations of ill-treatment had not been thorough, adequate or effective, in violation of Article   3.   (b) Severity of the treatment   The Court did not discern any circumstance which might have necessitated the use of violence against the applicants. It had never been argued that the applicants had resisted arrest, had attempted to escape or had not complied with lawful orders from the police officers. Furthermore, there was no indication that at any point during their arrest or subsequent detention at the police station they had threatened the police officers. It thus appeared that the use of force was intentional, retaliatory in nature and aimed at debasing the applicants and forcing them into submission.     In addition, the treatment to which the applicants had been subjected must have caused them mental and physical suffering. An important element to be taken into consideration was the consequences which the ill-treatment had had on the applicants’ health. The Court also attached great importance to the applicants’ young age (the first applicant was 17 and the second applicant was 19 years old at the time of the events), which made them particularly vulnerable. In those circumstances, having regard to the nature and degree of the ill-treatment and to the strong inferences that could be drawn from the evidence that it had been applied during questioning with the purpose of extracting confessions from the applicants, the Court found that the applicants had been subjected to treatment which could be characterised as torture, in further violation of Article   3.   Belousov   Article 3   As in the case of Akulinin and Babich , the Court considered that it could draw inferences from the Government’s conduct and found it established to the standard of proof required in the Convention proceedings that the injuries sustained by the applicant had been the result of the treatment of which he complained and for which the Government bore responsibility.   (a) Alleged inadequacy of the investigation   The Court found that the investigation carried out into the applicant’s allegations of ill-treatment had not been thorough, expedient or effective. The Court recognised that the investigation was still pending but, considering its length so far and the very serious shortcomings identified, the Court did not consider that the applicant should have waited for completion of the investigation before filing his complaint with the Court. Accordingly, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article   3 in this connection.   (b) The severity of the ill-treatment   The Court found it established that the applicant had been beaten up by police officers and that as a result of that beating he had sustained serious injuries. The Court did not discern any circumstance which might have necessitated the use of violence against the applicant. It had never been argued that he had resisted arrest, attempted to escape or that he had not complied with lawful orders from the police officers. Furthermore, there was no indication that at any point during his arrest or subsequent detention at the police station he had threatened the police officers. It appeared that the use of force was intentional, retaliatory in nature and aimed at debasing the applicant and forcing him into submission.     In addition, the treatment to which the applicant was subjected must have caused him mental and physical suffering. Moreover, it resulted in long ‑ term damage to his health. In those circumstances the Court found that the applicant had been subjected to treatment which could be characterised as torture, in further violation of Article   3.   Article 5 § 1   It was not disputed that no record had been drawn up of the applicant’s arrest.   The absence of an arrest record must in itself be considered a most serious failing, as it had been the Court’s constant view that unrecorded detention of an individual was a complete negation of the fundamentally important guarantees contained in Article 5 of the Convention and disclosed a most grave violation of that provision. The absence of a record of such matters as the date, time and location of detention, the name of the detainee, the reasons for the detention and the name of the person effecting it must be seen as incompatible with the requirement of lawfulness and with the very purpose of Article   5.   The lack of a proper record of the applicant’s detention was therefore sufficient for the Court to find that his confinement for several hours was in breach of domestic law and contrary to the requirements implicit in Article   5 for the proper recording of deprivations of liberty.   Samoylov   Article 3   (a) Adequacy of the investigation   The Court found that the authorities had failed to carry out an effective criminal investigation into the applicant’s allegations of ill-treatment. Accordingly, there had been a violation of Article   3 in this connection.   (b) Severity of the treatment   The Court observed that not only did the Government not contest the applicant’s account of the ill-treatment he had been subjected to in the police station, but in the first set of their observations they expressly accepted it. Having regard to the applicant’s consistent and detailed allegations, corroborated by the medical report, and in view of the absence of any other plausible explanation as to the origin of the injuries found on the applicant upon his transfer to remand prison, the Court accepted that the applicant had been subjected to the ill-treatment by police as described.   As to the seriousness of the ill-treatment, the acts complained of had been such as to arouse in the applicant feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing him and possibly breaking his physical and moral resistance. In any event, in respect of persons deprived of their liberty, recourse to physical force which had not been made strictly necessary by their own conduct diminished human dignity and was in principle an infringement of the right set forth in Article   3.     In the applicant’s case the existence of physical pain or suffering was attested by the medical report and the applicant’s statements regarding his ill-treatment in the police station. In particular, he had claimed to have been tortured with electrodes, a claim which had not been refuted by the Government. The sequence of events also demonstrated that the pain and suffering had been inflicted on him intentionally, in particular with the view to extracting from him a confession to having committed the offence he was suspected of.   In those circumstances, taken as a whole and having regard to its purpose and severity, the ill-treatment at issue amounted to torture, in further violation of Article   3.   Article 13   The Court found that there was no need to examine separately the complaint under Article   13.     In the case of Belousov Judge Kalaydjieva expressed a concurring opinion, which is annexed to the judgment.     ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Press contacts Adrien Meyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 33 37) Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) Sania Ivedi (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 59 45)   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] Judge elected in respect of Liechtenstein. [3] Judge elected in respect of Liechtenstein. [4] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.