CEDH · PRESS;GCJUDGMENTS;ENG — 17 septembre 2009

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .s598389F8 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center; font-size:11pt } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .sA678F94A { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right; font-size:11pt } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s2E932ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:11pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s4BAE41EE { font-family:Arial; font-size:11pt } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s92A5AB2 { font-family:Arial; font-size:11pt; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } .s11AD46B1 { font-family:Arial; font-size:7.33pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sBACB86A2 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s99A63BFE { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left; font-size:11pt } .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 } .sB853CD25 { font-family:Arial; font-size:9pt } .s5FFF0A7F { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:9pt }   661 17.09.2009   Press release issued by the Registrar   GRAND CHAMBER JUDGMENT   Enea v. Italy (application no. 74912/01)     No violation of Article   3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights; Violation of Article   6   §   1 (right to a fair trial) as regards the applicant’s right to a court during the period of application of the special prison regime; No violation of Article   6   §   1 concerning his right to a court during his detention in a high-supervision unit; Violation of Article 8 (right to respect for correspondence private and family life).     Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court held that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage suffered by the applicant, and awarded him 20,000   euros   (EUR) for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available in English and French .)   Principal facts   The applicant, Salvatore Enea, is an Italian national who was born in 1938. He was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment for, among other offences, membership of a Mafia-type criminal organisation, and has been in detention since 23 December 1993.   On 10 August 1994, in view of the danger posed by the applicant, the Minister of Justice issued a decree ordering that he be subject for one year to the special prison regime provided for in the second paragraph of section 41 bis of the Prison Administration Act. This provision allows application of the ordinary prison regime to be suspended in whole or in part for reasons of public order and safety. The decree imposed restrictions on, among other things, family visits (one hour-long visit per month) and the number of parcels received; the applicant was also prohibited from seeing non-family members, using the telephone and organising and taking part in certain activities. In addition, his correspondence was monitored. Application of the special regime was extended until late 2005 by means of 19   decrees, each valid for a limited period.   Mr Enea lodged several appeals with the Naples court responsible for the execution of sentences, which on three occasions decided to ease some of the restrictions imposed on him. He did not lodge an appeal on points of law, maintaining that the Court of Cassation would have dismissed any such appeals as being devoid of purpose since the validity of the ministerial decrees in question had already expired when the court responsible for the execution of sentences gave its rulings. In late February 2005 the court allowed the applicant’s appeal against decree no. 19 and ordered application of the special regime to be discontinued.   On 1 March 2005 the prison authorities placed the applicant in a high-supervision ( Elevato Indice di Vigilanza – E.I.V.) unit, where certain very dangerous prisoners are held separately from other inmates.   Salvatore Enea has a number of health problems and was thus obliged to use a wheelchair. Between June 2000 and February 2005 he served his sentence in the part of the hospital wing of Naples prison reserved for prisoners detained under the section 41 bis regime. In October 2008 the Naples court responsible for the execution of sentences ordered a stay of execution of the applicant’s sentence, as his state of health had become incompatible with detention in prison. Mr Enea has since been subject to house arrest.   Complaints and procedure   The applicant alleged that his continued detention had been contrary to Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular in view of his state of health.   He further contended, under Article 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) that he had been subject to substantial restrictions in the exercise of his right to a court in connection with the ministerial decrees making him subject to the section 41 bis regime and the prison authorities’ decision to place him in the E.I.V. unit.   Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), the applicant also complained of the restrictions placed on contact with his family and of the monitoring of his correspondence.   Finally, under Article 9 (right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion), he complained that he had been unable to practise his religion, in particular by attending the funerals of his brother and girlfriend.   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 31   August 2000 and declared partly admissible on 23   September 2004. On   1 July 2008 the Chamber to which the case had been allocated relinquished jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber, under Article   30 [1] . A hearing was held in Strasbourg on 5   November 2008.   Summary of the judgment [2]   Article 3   The Court noted that the restrictions imposed on the applicant under the special prison regime had been necessary in order to prevent him from maintaining contacts with the criminal organisation to which he belonged. It also noted that the courts responsible for the execution of sentences had lifted or eased certain of those restrictions and that Mr Enea had received treatment appropriate to his state of health, either in prison or in a hospital outside prison. Accordingly, it considered that the treatment to which the applicant had been subjected did not exceed the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention and concluded, by 15 votes to 2, that there had not been a violation of Article 3.   Article 6 § 1   With regard to the imposition of the special prison regime provided for in section 41 bis , the Court noted that prisoners subjected to that regime have ten days from the date on which the ministerial decree is served in which to lodge an appeal, which does not have suspensive effect, with the court responsible for the execution of sentences; the latter in its turn must give a ruling within ten days. The Court noted that for one of the 19 decrees issued against the applicant – decree no. 12 – the court responsible for the execution of sentences had given its ruling well after the 10-day deadline laid down in the legislation, and dismissed the appeal on the ground that the validity of the impugned decree had expired and that the applicant was consequently no longer subject to it. The Court considered that, since it had not resulted in a decision on the merits of the application of the special regime, the courts’ review of decree no. 12 had been deprived of its substance. It concluded, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 6.   As to the restrictions on the right to a court during the period of detention in the E.I.V. unit, the Italian Government submitted that, unlike the special prison regime under section 41 bis , this type of measure did not fall within the scope of the criminal limb of Article 6 § 1. They also argued that the interest of a prisoner in not being assigned to a particular unit of the prison in which he was serving his sentence could not be characterised as a “civil right” giving access to a court within the meaning of Article 6. Mr Enea’s application was therefore inadmissible. This point of view was shared by the Slovakian Government as a third-party intervener.   Like the Italian Government, the Court considered that Article 6 § 1 was not applicable under its criminal head to placement in the E.I.V. unit. On the other hand, it noted that most of the restrictions to which the applicant had allegedly been subjected on account of this placement related to a set of prisoners’ rights which the Council of Europe had recognised by means of the European Prison Rules, adopted by the Committee of Ministers in 1987 and elaborated on in a Recommendation of 11 January 2006. The Court acknowledged that although this recommendation was not legally binding on the member States, the great majority of them recognised that prisoners enjoyed most of the rights to which it referred and provided for avenues of appeal against measures restricting those rights. The Court therefore considered that in this case, to use the wording of Article 6 § 1, a “dispute ( contestation ) over a right“ could reasonably be said to have existed. In addition, there was no doubt that some of the restrictions alleged by the applicant – such as those restricting his contact with his family and those affecting his pecuniary rights – clearly fell within the sphere of personal rights and were therefore civil in nature. Accordingly, the Court found, by 16 votes to 1, that this part of the application was admissible.   On the merits, the Court noted that, while it was true that a prisoner could not challenge per se the merits of a decision to place him or her in an E.I.V. unit, an appeal lay to the courts responsible for the execution of sentences against any restriction of a “civil” right (affecting, for instance, a prisoner's family visits). In the present case, not only was the applicant not subjected to any such restriction but, if he had been, he would have had access to a court. Accordingly, the Court concluded unanimously that there had not been a violation of Article 6   §   1 in this respect.   Article 8   Following its well-established case-law, the Court noted that the monitoring of the applicant’s correspondence had been in breach of Article 8, as it had not been in accordance with the law, in so far as section 18 of the Prison Administration Act - on the basis of which the measure had been imposed - did not regulate either the duration of the measure or the reasons capable of justifying it, and did not indicate with sufficient clarity the scope and manner of exercise of the discretion exercised by the competent authorities. The Court concluded unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 8 for the period running from 10 August 1994 to 7 July 2004, the applicant having failed to submit evidence enabling it to ascertain whether his correspondence had been monitored after that date.   Articles 13 and 9   The Court held unanimously that there was no need to examine separately the complaint under Article   13, and declared inadmissible the complaint under Article   9.     Judges Kovler and Gyulumyan expressed a partly dissenting opinion, which is annexed to the judgment.     ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Press contacts Stefano Piedimonte (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 90 21 42 04) or Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) Kristina Pencheva-Malinowski (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 70) Céline Menu-Lange (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 90 21 58 77) Frédéric Dolt (telephone : 00 33 (0)3 90 21 53 39)   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] Where a case pending before a Chamber raises a serious question affecting the interpretation of the Convention or the protocols thereto, or where the resolution of a question before the Chamber might have a result inconsistent with a judgment previously delivered by the Court, the Chamber may, at any time before it has rendered its judgment, relinquish jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber, unless one of the parties to the case objects. [2] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.