Communicated on 29 January 2020 Published on 17 February 2020

FIRST SECTION

Application no. 25551/18 Drago Tadić against Croatia lodged on 24 May 2018

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns criminal proceedings against the applicant on charges of associating for the purpose of committing criminal offences and instigating to illegal intercession. The proceedings involved a plan of a group of persons to influence the Supreme Court, by paying a sum of money, to render a favourable decision to a famous politician who was being tried for a war crime.

On 27 February 2013 the first-instance court found the applicant guilty as charged and sentenced him to two years ’ imprisonment. He was convicted largely on the basis of secret surveillance recordings obtained in the period between 20 July and 3 September 2010. The applicant and the prosecution appealed. While the appeals were pending before the Supreme Court, on 11 December 2016 the national daily newspaper Jutarnji list published a transcript of the audio recordings of the applicant ’ s tapped telephone conversations with certain persons related to the charges against him. According to the newspaper article, the recordings were obtained by the Security Intelligence Agency and the conversations were recorded in the period between 4 and 20 July 2010. Those recordings were not part of the criminal case against the applicant. On 7 February 2017 the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals lodged by applicant and the prosecution and upheld the applicant ’ s conviction. It did not refer to the recordings published in the media. In his constitutional complaint the applicant complained that, inter alia , the publication of the Security Intelligence Agency ’ s recordings of his telephone conversations while the criminal proceedings had been pending before the Supreme Court on appeal, had influenced the Supreme Court ’ s judges and had breached his presumption of innocence. He also complained that the Supreme Court had not been impartial because the president of that court, who allegedly had been involved in the events but had not been prosecuted, had testified against him. The Constitutional Court dismissed his constitutional complaint as unfounded.

The applicant complains, under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, that the Supreme Court who upheld his conviction was not impartial because of the involvement of the president of that court in the case. He alleges that in the circumstances the Supreme Court was protecting its president and its own integrity and did not act objectively.

The applicant also complains that the publication in the media, two months before the Supreme Court decided on the appeals in his case, of transcripts of his telephone conversations unlawfully recorded by the Security Intelligence Agency influenced the Supreme Court judges and put pressure on them to uphold his conviction, as well as breached his right to be presumed innocent guaranteed by Article 6 § 2 of the Convention.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Was the Supreme Court which acted as the appellate court in the applicant ’ s case impartial, as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, having regard:

(a) that the Supreme Court ’ s president at the time was a witness for the prosecution;

(b) that the transcripts of recordings of the applicant ’ s telephone conversations allegedly obtained by the Security Intelligence Agency were published in the media two months before the Supreme Court rendered its decision?

2. Did the publication in the media of transcripts of the applicant ’ s telephone conversations allegedly recorded by the Security Intelligence Agency, two months before the Supreme Court upheld the applicant ’ s conviction, infringe the applicant ’ s right to be presumed innocent under Article 6 § 2 of the Convention (see, mutatis mutandis, Batiashvili v. Georgia, no. 8284/07, §§ 72-97, 10 October 2019)?