SECOND SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 27382/07
Nurcan CANPOLAT and Others
against Turkey

The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 4 December 2012 as a Chamber composed of:

Guido Raimondi, President,
Danutė Jočienė,
Peer Lorenzen,
Dragoljub Popović,
Işıl Karakaş,
Nebojša Vučinić,
Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, judges,
and Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 22 June 2007,

Having regard to the formal declarations accepting a friendly settlement of the case,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

FACTS AND PROCEDURE

The applicants, Nurcan Canpolat, Serhan Canpolat, Fehime Canpolat, Osman Gazi Canpolat, Nevroz Canpolat and Baran Canpolat, are Turkish nationals who were born in 1973, 1931, 1933, 1990, 1992 and 1993 respectively and live in Diyarbakır. They were represented before the Court by Mr Sedat Çınar, a lawyer practising in Diyarbakır.

The Turkish Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent.

The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, and as they appear from the documents submitted by them, may be summarised as follows.

In the early hours of 31 October 1993 Kemal Canpolat was arrested at his father’s house by police officers from the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the Diyarbakır Police Headquarters. Kemal Canpolat was the husband of the first applicant, the son of the second and third applicants, and the father of the remaining three applicants.

Before Kemal Canpolat was taken into custody he was examined by a doctor, who recorded in a report that there were no injuries on his body.

In a statement drawn up on 3 November 1993 by a number of police officers Kemal Canpolat was reported as having told the police officers that he was a member of the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan) and that a pistol given to him by other PKK members was in his house. According to the same statement he was then taken to his own house, where the police officers found the pistol hidden in the bedroom. He was subsequently taken back to the police station.

In a letter dated 21 November 2006 the first applicant Mrs Canpolat stated that when brought to the house on 3 November 1993 her husband had been unable to stand up without the help of the police officers. His clothes were wet, the right side of his face was bruised, the left side of his head was swollen and his right arm was in a sling. She also stated in the letter that no pistols had been found in the house.

According to a letter dated 10 November 1993 and signed by a police chief, Kemal Canpolat complained of feeling unwell in police custody and asked to be examined by a doctor. The doctor who examined him the same day wrote on the same letter that Kemal Canpolat was suffering from “neurotic depression”.

At 6.40 p.m. on 11 November 1993 Kemal Canpolat was taken from police custody, by police officers, to a hospital. According to the hospital notes, when he arrived at the hospital he was in shock. The doctors started treating him but his heart stopped. He was pronounced dead after an unsuccessful cardiac massage.

A post-mortem examination was carried out the following day. The doctor who carried out the examination noted the existence of small ecchymosed areas on his penis and head. The cause of death was established as peritonitis (inflammation of the serous membrane) caused by perforation of a duodenal ulcer. A prosecutor was present during the autopsy.

No investigation of the death was opened by the authorities.

In 1995 the first applicant, Mrs Canpolat, applied to the European Commission of Human Rights, and alleged that her husband had been detained and had died in circumstances which engaged the responsibility of the respondent State under Articles 2, 3 and 5 of the Convention. In 1996 the application was declared inadmissible for the applicant’s failure to comply with the six-month rule (see Canpolat v. Turkey (dec.), no. 28491/95, Commission decision of 9 April 1996).

In 1999 a Mr Mehmet Zahir Karadeniz, who had apparently been detained in the same police station and at the same time as Mr Ke