Published on 12 December 2022

FOURTH SECTION

Application no. 25801/18 György-Sandor VARGA against Romania lodged on 24 May 2018 communicated on 25 November 2022

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns, inter alia , the criminal conviction of the applicant for which the domestic courts relied on depositions of key witnesses without hearing them in person.

By a final decision of 31 October 2017, made available on 27 November 2017, the Oradea Court of Appeal convicted the applicant for unlawful deprivation of liberty and sentenced him to 5 years and 6 months of imprisonment.

The first instance court (the Oradea District Court) decided to hear the witnesses. After several subpoenas and the issue of a bench warrant ( mandat de aducere ) that court concluded that it was impossible to find the three key witnesses and proceeded to read their written statements given during the pre ‑ trial stage. The reason the police failed to execute the bench warrants was the fact that the three witnesses were out of the country. In the case of H.L.R, the police had managed to find out that the witness was to return to Romania at the end of the year (2017). The court decided to proceed to the judgment without further trying to bring the witnesses in front of it.

In the appeal proceedings, the applicant complained about this issue and, initially, the appellate court decided to hear the three witnesses and therefore proceeded to subpoena them. At the following hearing, given that the witnesses were still absent, the court decided to proceed to the judgment of the appeal without hearing the three witnesses.

The applicant complains under Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention of the fact that three of the prosecution’s key witnesses (H.L.R., V.E. and V.B.) were not heard by the domestic courts, but instead the courts decided to read the statements given by these witnesses in the pretrial proceedings.

In relation to his subsequent imprisonment, the applicant complains, under Article 3 of the Convention, of the conditions of detention he experienced in Oradea and Satu Mare Prisons from 31 October 2017 to 15 May 2018, date of his release on parole.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Was the applicant able to examine witnesses against him, as required by Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention (see Schatschaschwili v. Germany [GC], no. 9154/10, ECHR 2015)?

2. Has the applicant exhausted the domestic remedy examined by the Court in the case Dîrjan and Ştefan v. Romania ((dec.), nos. 14224/15 and 50977/15, 15 April 2020) in respect of his complaint under Article 3 of the Convention?

3. Did the material conditions of the applicant’s detention, in Oradea and Satu Mare Prisons from 31 October 2017 to 15 May 2018, amount to inhuman or degrading treatment?