FIRST SECTION

FINAL DECISION

AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF

Application no. 62208/00 by Vladimir Madestovich LABZOV against Russia

The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 8 January 2004 as a Chamber composed of

Mr C.L. Rozakis , President , Mrs F. Tulkens , Mrs N. Vajić , Mr E. Levits , Mr A. Kovler , Mr V. Zagrebelsky , Mrs E. Steiner , judges , and Mr S . Nielsen , Deputy Section Registrar ,

Having regard to the above application introduced on 8 June 2000 and registered on 25 October 2000,

Having regard to the partial decision of 28 February 2002,

Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, Vladimir Madestovich Labzov, is a Russian national. He was born in 1956 and lives in Cheboksary. The respondent Government are represented by Mr Pavel Laptev, Representative of the Russian Federation in the European Court of Human Rights.

A. The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.

1 . Criminal proceedings against the applicant

The applicant used to work as a manager of a private company.

On 5 April 2000 (on 10 April, according to the Government) investigating authorities charged him with embezzlement. The authorities’ case was that the applicant had fraudulently appropriated a tractor and a tank truck belonging to the company. On 10 April 2000, after the applicant’s interrogation, the investigating officer in charge of the case decided to arrest the applicant and to detain him in remand centre IZ-15/2.

On 11 April 2000 the applicant was placed in the hospital of prison UL-34/4. He stayed in the hospital until 16 May 2000 when he was relocated to remand centre IZ-15/2 of Tsivilsk. From 16 June to 22 July 2000 the applicant had to be hospitalised again.

On 31 July 2000 the investigating authorities closed the case against the applicant under an amnesty law of 26 May 2000. On 1 August 2000 the applicant was released.

2 . Appeal to the Kalininskiy District court

According to the applicant, when in hospital, on 12 April 2000 he applied for judicial review of his detention, but it was not until 19 April that the prison administration forwarded the application to the court.

According to the Government, the applicant wrote the appeal on 19 April 2000 and the prison administration forwarded it to the court the same day.

On 20 April 2000 the Kalininskiy District Court of Cheboksary refused to consider the merits of the application because the applicant had not complied with rules of territorial jurisdiction. The court observed, in particular, that it could only accept applications from persons detained in temporary detention units, remand centres or other prison facilities adapted to house remand prisoners. The court decided that the prison hospital did not qualify as any of the above.

In his appeal the applicant argued that the hospital had all the features of a prison: bars on windows, locked doors, guards, two rows of high-voltage electrified barbed wire fencing, guard dogs and watchtowers.

On 1 June 2000 the Supreme Court of the Chuvash Republic upheld on appeal the reasoning of the Kalininskiy District Court.

3. Appeal to the Tsivilskiy District Court

Whilst the decision of the Kalininskiy District Court was being examined on appeal, on 17 May 2000 the applicant filed an application for release with the Tsivilsk District Court. He asked the court to apply a less severe measure of restraint.

On 19 May 2000 the Tsivislk District Court dismissed the application because the applicant faced serious charges. On 8 June 2000 the Supreme Court of the Chuvash Republic upheld that decision.

On 14 July 2000 the Prison Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Chuvash Republic informed the applicant’s lawyers that the prison hospital was adapted for keeping remand prisoners.

4. Conditions in remand centre IZ-15/2

From 16 May to 16 June and from 22 July to 1 August 2000 the applicant was detained in remand centre IZ-15/2 of Tsivilsk.

(a) The applicant’s account

The applicant describes the conditions in which he was detained as follows.

Prisoners were transported to the remand centre in prison vans. Even though the heat outside reached 30 degrees, each van carried as many as 30-40 persons and provided no fresh air. Guards clubbed the prisoners and set the dogs on them.

On arrival to the remand centre, the applicant was placed in Cell no. 18, a so-called “quarantine” cell for newly arrived prisoners. The windows in the cell had no glass. Instead they were tightly covered with halved metal tubes with small holes in them. The cell was located in the basement and had no ventilation. No bedding, crockery or cutlery was available. The toilet was fixed to the wall at 1.8 m above the floor. Next to it stood a dinner table. As the cell was inhabited by 78 detainees, the toilet and the table were always occupied, often at the same time. Dozens of the detainees smoked causing dizziness in the others. Whenever someone lost consciousness, guards dragged him out into the corridor for a breath of fresher air.

The prison building was ancient, dating back to the reign of Empress Catherine in the 18th century. The building had not been re-constructed ever since. Floors were filled with dirt which let no air through.

Most of the period of the detention the applicant spent in Cell no. 49. That cell measured 15 sq. m, had 10 two-storied bunk beds and was occupied on average by 35-40 persons at any given time. The detainees had to take turns sleeping. No bedding, crockery or cutlery was available in that cell either. As the dinner table was small, detainees had to take their meals in 5-6 turns sharing their dishes with the ill. The food was hardly edible. The windows were covered with metal blinds which let almost no light through. Daily the detainees were allowed to have an hour-long walk in a small yard on the roof of the building. It was impossible to sleep as the lights were never switched off, the detainees listened to music and talked day and night. The cell was infested with cock-roaches, ants, lice, mice and rats. The supply of hot water was limited to 20 litres a day. Once every two weeks a detainee was allowed to take a five-minute-long shower. The toilet was fixed at 1.2 m above the floor. It was exposed to the guards’ peephole. As the guards were mostly women, using the toilet was a humiliation. The cell was overpopulated and five detainees suffered of dysentery, therefore the toilet was never free.

The conditions in Cell no. 16 where the applicant was also detained were even worse because that cell was flooded with faeces.

The authorities did not provide the applicant, who suffered from a serious heart condition, with medical care and confiscated the medicines which he had with him.

(b) The Government’s account

According to the Government, the applicant received full medical care. He was several times examined by doctors and had all necessary medicines. Medicines not prescribed by the doctor of the remand centre were confiscated as required by the prison regulations. The Government have submitted reports on the state of the applicant’s health prepared by medical services of the remand centre and prison UL-34/4.

At the material time the remand centre was indeed overpopulated beyond sanitary norms, but the applicant had a bunk bed and bedding of his own. The cell was never occupied by 80 detainees at a time.

The applicant’s allegation that the quarantine cell was located in the flooded basement is untrue because quarantine Cell no. 18 is located on the ground floor.

On 29 May 2002 sanitary officers of the Prison Service inspected Cell no. 18. The Government submitted their report to the Court. According to the report, the cell is located on the ground floor and measures 23 square metres, its ceiling is 3 metres high. The ventilation is natural. Light comes from filament lamps on the ceiling and from windows. The windows are equipped with double casements and have opening panes measuring 0.7 by 0.7 metres. The windows are barred from the outside. The heating, water supply and sewer systems are central. The walls are coated with blue oil-paint up to the ceiling. The ceiling is coated with white water paint. The cell has a dinner table, two benches for the length of the table and wooden bunk beds. The microclimate in the cell met the sanitary norms.

5. The applicant’s reasons for leaving Russia

According to the applicant, on 20 December 2002 he received a telephone call from an investigating officer of the Ministry of the Interior of the Chuvash Republic. The officer, who did not identify himself, invited the applicant to an interview concerning a criminal investigation about which the applicant did not know anything.

On 21 December 2002 the received a telephone call from a person who identified himself as Mr Kazakov, a Deputy Director of the Department on Economic Crimes of the Ministry of the Interior of the Chuvash Republic. Mr Kazakov asked questions concerning the applicant’s complaints to the Court. He let the applicant understand that if the applicant did not withdraw his case from Strasbourg, the authorities would find grounds to start a new criminal case against him and remand him in custody.

On 23 December 2002 the applicant received a telephone call from Mr Plotnikov, the Director of the Department on Economic Crimes. Mr Plotnikov invited the applicant to visit his offices in the afternoon. In the course of the talk, Mr Plotnikov ordered the applicant by gestures not to speak up because the room was bugged, afraid to speak, the official wrote down all crucial phrases and showed them to the applicant.

Mr Plotnikov twice invited the applicant to leave the room. In the corridor, the official told the applicant that he would start a new criminal case separate from the one which was considered by the Court, place the applicant in prison and arrange that the applicant die there of a heart attack. Mr Plotnikov insisted that the applicant withdraw his case from the Court because these proceedings had created trouble for high officials of the Chuvash Republic.

The applicant also alleged that on 26 December 2002 the car driven by him collided with four lorries. As the traffic police paid no attention to the accident, the applicant concluded that the accident had been set up by his persecutors.

Taking the threats especially seriously after the accident, the applicant went to Moscow where he obtained a French tourist visa and left for Strasbourg to seek political asylum.

B. Relevant domestic law

Under Article 220-1-2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1960 (“CCrP”), which was in force at the material time, when a remand prisoner wrote an application for release, the prison administration had to forward it to the court within twenty-four hours.

Under Article 220-2 of the CCrP, applications for release were to be examined by the court having territorial jurisdiction over the detainee’s place of detention.

Under section 7 of the Law on the Detention of Remand Prisoners, remand prisoners could be detained in investigative isolation units, remand centres and, in special cases, in prisons for convicted prisoners.

COMPLAINTS

1. Under Article 3 of the Convention the applicant complained about the conditions of his detention on remand.

2. Under Article 5 the applicant complained that the prison authorities had not forwarded his application for release to the court in time, and that the Kalininskiy District Court of Cheboksary refused to consider his application for release because it had been made from the prison hospital.

3. The applicant also complained that police officers intimidated him and urged to withdraw his application from the Court.

THE LAW

1. The applicant complained that the conditions of his detention were incompatible with Article 3 of the Convention which reads as follows:

“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The parties submitted contradictory descriptions of the conditions in remand centre IZ-15/2.

The Government did not agree that the conditions were such as to breach Article 3 of the Convention. They pointed to inconsistencies in the applicant’s account of facts. They noted that in any event the authorities had had no intent to cause him any suffering and that IZ-15/2 had been included in the federal program of reconstruction of prisons.

The applicant criticised the Government’s account of facts as overall untrue. He noted that the Government had only provided data on the sanitary state of Cell no. 18 but not Cells nos. 49 and 16, which were smaller. He also noted that the authorities’ only motive for holding him in custody had been to make him suffer as there was no case to answer and, in any event, as he had to be released under the amnesty law.

The Court considers, in the light of the parties’ submissions, that the complaint raises serious issues of fact and law under the Convention, the determination of which requires an examination of the merits. The Court concludes therefore that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. No other ground for declaring it inadmissible has been established.

2. Under Article 5 the applicant complained that he could not obtain a judicial review of his detention on remand immediately after his arrest. The Court will consider this complaint under Article 5 § 4 of the Convention which reads as follows:

“4. Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful.”

The Government challenged the applicant’s account of events. They submitted that the prison administration forwarded his appeal to the court immediately after the applicant had written it, that is on 19 April 2000, and that nothing suggested that the applicant had asked for the appeal to be forwarded any earlier.

With regard to the decision of the Kalininskiy District Court of 20 April 2000, the Government submitted that the court had had no authority to deal with the applicant’s application for release. Under the law, appeals for release were to be made to the court having territorial jurisdiction over the remand centre where a person was detained. Even though physically the applicant was in the prison hospital, legally he was considered as detained in IZ-15/2, and he should have addressed his appeal to the relevant court, that is the Tsivilsk District Court. Had the applicant complied with this rule, his appeal would have been speedily examined, as was the case with his appeal of 17 May 2000.

The applicant insisted that he had written his first appeal for release on 12 April 2000. He argued that since he, a remand prisoner, was physically detained in the prison hospital over which the Kalininskiy District Court had jurisdiction, that court should have considered his application.

The Court recalls that an obligation to “decide speedily” also applies to a court which has been seized by mistake, for the decision to declare itself incompetent (see Luberti v. Italy , judgment of 23 February 1984, Series A no. 75, § 33).

The Kalininskiy District Court found that it had no authority to entertain the applicant’s first application for release on 20 April 2000, that is eight days, at the latest, after it had been written. The Court considers that this period is speedy enough to comply with Article 5 § 4 (see, by contrast, Luberti , cited above, § 33).

The applicant’s second application for release, lodged on 17 May 2000, was examined by the Tsivilsk District Court on 19 May 2000, that is two days later. The Court considers this period to be also compatible with the notion of “speediness” (see Egue v. France , no. 11256/84, Commission decision of 5 September 1988, Decisions and Reports (DR) 57, p. 47).

It follows that this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.

3. Lastly, the applicant alleged that investigating officers threatened him in connection with his application to the Court. The Court will examine this complaint under Article 34 of the Convention which reads as follows:

“The Court may receive applications from any person, ... claiming to be the victim of a violation by one of the High Contracting Parties of the rights set forth in the Convention or the Protocols thereto. The High Contracting Parties undertake not to hinder in any way the effective exercise of this right.”

The Government confirmed that investigating officers Plotnikov and Kazakov did interview the applicant in December 2002. The aim of the interview was to verify a statement by D., the applicant’s former business partner. D. had complained, in particular, that the applicant had misappropriated assets of his company, and that the police should not have closed the case against the applicant as he had not made good the loss.

The Government denied that the officers had put any pressure on the applicant in connection with the proceedings in Strasbourg. They acknowledged, however, that there had been no sufficient legal grounds to summon the applicant for the interview. The Government submitted that the officers had been subjected to disciplinary proceedings for that excess of authority.

The applicant insisted that the aim of the interview was to intimidate him. He claimed that it was impossible to bring any new case against him based on the testimony of D., and that he had only left Russia because he was afraid for his life.

The Court recalls that that it is of the utmost importance for the effective operation of the system of individual petition instituted by Article 34 that applicants or potential applicants should be able to communicate freely with the Convention organs without being subjected to any form of pressure from the authorities to withdraw or modify their complaints (see Akdivar and Others v. Turkey , judgment of 16 September 1996, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-IV, § 105).

The Court considers, in the light of the parties’ submissions, that the complaint raises serious issues of fact and law under the Convention, the determination of which requires an examination of the merits. The Court concludes therefore that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. No other ground for declaring it inadmissible has been established.

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Declares admissible, without prejudging the merits, the applicant’s complaints about the conditions of his detention on remand and about the hindrance in free communication with the Court;

Declares inadmissible the remainder of the application.

Søren Nielsen Christos Rozakis              Deputy Registrar President