CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 20 juillet 2010

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Moldova (No 3) (application no. 7481/06)     EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS commends MOLDOVAN SUPREME COURT FOR ITS RULING ON INHUMAN TREATMENT APART FROM INSUFFICIENT COMPENSATION   Unanimously   Violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights     Principal facts   The applicant, Tudor Ciorap, is a Moldovan national who was born in 1965 and lives in Chisinau. [2]   The case concerned Mr Ciorap’s complaints that the police tortured him in detention and left him for days on end in appalling custody conditions and without urgent medical help.   Mr Ciorap was arrested on suspicion of fraud on 23 October 2000, two days after he had left hospital for a liver-related operation. He alleged that he was severely beaten with machine guns and rubber truncheons and that the beating reopened his surgical wound. He was then placed in a small police station cell where he had to sleep on a concrete floor without a bed, mattress or blankets and without access to a toilet or washing facilities. A doctor saw him seven days later and recommended his immediate admission into hospital. However, the police refused to transfer him and it was not until eight days later, that he was placed in a prison medical unit.   Mr Ciorap complained to the domestic courts that the police had ill-treated him, denied him immediate medical help and kept him in inhuman conditions. It was not found to be established that Mr Ciorap had been beaten or otherwise tortured by the police. However, in November 2007 the Supreme Court of Justice found that there had been a delay of eight days in providing necessary medical treatment and that he had been kept in inhuman detention conditions, contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Supreme Court noted that, although no domestic law existed in Moldova for compensation for Article 3 violations, the Convention had to be applied directly as it was part of the domestic legal system according to the Moldovan Constitution. The Supreme Court awarded Mr Ciorap 600 Euros (EUR) as compensation for non-pecuniary damage and EUR   12,6 for pecuniary damage.     Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court   Relying on Article 3, Mr Ciorap complained that he had been ill-treated by the police, detained in inhuman conditions and denied medical treatment.   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 26 January 2006.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Nicholas Bratza (the United Kingdom), President , Lech Garlicki (Poland), Ljiljana Mijovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Davi Thor Björgvinsson (Iceland), Jan Šikuta (Slovakia), Paivi Hirvelä (Finland), Mihai Poalelungi (Moldova), judges , and also Laurence Early , Section Registrar .   Decision of the Court   The Court first examined whether Mr Ciorap could still claim to be a victim of a violation of Article 3. It noted that a decision in favour of an applicant was not sufficient by itself to deprive him or her of the victim status. The national authorities should have also acknowledged, either explicitly or in substance, the breach of the Convention and should have afforded redress for it.   In addition, it was important to ascertain whether the applicant had received compensation – comparable to the just satisfaction award of the Court under Article 41 - for the damage caused. The Court recalled its settled practice that, where the national authorities had found a violation and had provided sufficient redress for it, the applicants could no longer claim to be victims within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention.   Mr Ciorap had been detained only two days after his operation and had, therefore, not been in good health immediately before his arrest. The medical evidence submitted to the Court had only indicated that, after the arrest, he had experienced problems related to his surgical wound; however, there had been no evidence to show the existence of any other injury that could have been caused by the alleged beating. Given that Mr Ciorap had a history of self ‑ harm in prison, it was not excluded that he could have re-opened the wound himself. Consequently, his allegations that he had been tortured had not been substantiated before the Court.   However, the national court had found that conditions in the police station where Mr Ciorap had been kept had been inhuman; that, against medical advice, he had been denied medical treatment for eight days; and that those circumstances had given rise to a violation of Article   3. In the light of the principle of subsidiarity, which requires the Convention rights to be secured in the first place by the national authorities, and given that the Moldovan Supreme Court had examined the issues and found a violation of Article 3, the Court held that it could not rule to the contrary, as the national court had neither misinterpreted or misapplied the Convention principles. Neither had it reached a manifestly unreasonable conclusion.   The Court commended the Moldovan Supreme Court’s decision which had found that Mr   Ciorap had been treated inhumanly, in breach of Article 3. That said, in respect of the compensation awarded to him, the Court found that it was considerably below the minimum it generally awarded in cases in which it found Article 3 violations. Therefore, Mr Ciorap had not been given sufficient redress for the damage caused to him and could still claim to be a victim of an Article 3 violation.   The Court concluded that Article 3 had been breached in view of the inhuman conditions, in which Mr Ciorap had been held, and of the failure to provide him with timely medical assistance.   Under Article 41 of the Convention, it awarded Mr Ciorap EUR 4,000 in respect of non ‑ pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 in respect of costs and expenses.   ***   The judgment is available only in English. This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court. Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on its Internet site . To receive the Court’s press releases, you can subscribe to the Court’s RSS feeds .     Press contacts [email protected] / +33 3 90 21 42 08 or Kristina Pencheva-Malinowski (telephone: + 33 3 88 41 35 70) Emma Hellyer (telephone: + 33 3 90 21 42 15) Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: + 33 3 88 41 35 30) Céline Menu-Lange (telephone: + 33 3 90 21 58 77) Frédéric Dolt (telephone: + 33 3 90 21 53 39) Nina Salomon (telephone: + 33 3 90 21 49 79)   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 Articles   43   and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of judges considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on the   day the   request is rejected. Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution. Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution .   [2] In a previous application of his against Moldova, the Court found several violations, including of Article 3 on account of his being force-fed in detention.