SECOND SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 38016/18 Denis GRÃŽU against the Republic of Moldova

The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 7 June 2022 as a Committee composed of:

Branko Lubarda, President, Jovan Ilievski, Diana Sârcu, judges, and Hasan Bakırcı, Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 38016/18) against the Republic of Moldova lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 2 August 2018 by a Moldovan national, Mr Denis Grîu, who was born in 1984 and lives in Chișinău (“the applicant”) and who was represented by Mr V. Malanciuc, a lawyer practising in Chișinău;

the decision to give notice of the complaint concerning Article 5 § 3 of the Convention to the Moldovan Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Mr O. Rotari, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The applicant was accused of having determined a witness to make false statements, an offence provided for by Article 314 of the Criminal Code. It was alleged that he had offered that person gifts in exchange for his changing his earlier submissions in criminal proceedings in which the applicant’s friend was defendant.

On 31 March 2018 an investigating judge ordered the applicant’s remand in custody pending trial. Among the reasons relied upon by the judge was the risk of the applicant’s interfering with the investigation and the risk of absconding. The remand was prolonged on several occasions, until 15 June 2018, when the applicant was released from the detention.

On 16 April 2019 the applicant was found guilty as charged and sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year imprisonment. The criminal proceedings are pending to date.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

In view of similar complaints concerning poor conditions of detention, in 2019 the Court decided to join this application with forty-one other applications (see Bulgacov and Others v. the Republic of Moldova (dcc.) [committee], nos. 54187/15 and 41 other applications, 19 March 2019) and declared the applications partially inadmissible. The Court now considers that it is necessary to disjoin this application from the other forty-one and to examine it separately.

The applicant complains under Article 5 § 3 of the Convention that his deprivation of liberty for two months and a half was not based on relevant and sufficient reasons.

The Government submitted that there had been a reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed an offence, sustained by relevant and sufficient reasons to remand the applicant in custody throughout the entire period concerned.

The general principles concerning the need to rely on relevant and sufficient reasons for depriving someone of liberty and the obligation of display of “special diligence” by the national authorities have been summarized in Buzadji v. the Republic of Moldova [GC] (no. 23755/07, §§ 84-91, 5 July 2016).

The Court notes that when ordering and prolonging the applicant’s detention, the domestic courts considered inter alia that there was a risk of interference with the investigation. The domestic courts’ fear about that risk appears to have been justified, since the applicant was accused of having attempted to influence a witness to make false statements in a different set of criminal proceedings, knowing that justifications which have been deemed “relevant” and “sufficient” reasons in the Court’s case-law have included inter alia the risk of pressure being brought to bear on witnesses ( ibid., § 88).

In such circumstances, the Court considers that the applicant’s remand in custody appears to have been justified. Moreover, it cannot be said that the courts did not act with sufficient diligence and that the applicant’s detention was excessively long.

It follows that the application must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Disjoins the application from the others to which it was joined ;

Declares the remainder of the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 30 June 2022.

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Hasan Bakırcı Branko Lubarda Registrar President