Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 180

December 2014

Hassan and Others v. France - 46695/10 and 54588/10

Judgment 4.12.2014 [Section V]

Article 5

Article 5-3

Brought promptly before judge or other officer

48 hours’ police custody following several days’ deprivation of liberty following arrest on Somalian territory: violation

Article 5-1

Procedure prescribed by law

Absence of rules governing detention pending appearance before competent judicial authority of persons arrested overseas: violation

[This summary also covers the judgment in the case of Ali Samatar and Others v. France, 17110/10 and 17301/10, 4 December 2014]

Facts – These two cases concern nine applicants, who, in 2008, separately took possession of two French-registered cruise ships and took their crews hostage with the intention of negotiating their release for a ransom. The applicants were arrested and held in the custody of French military personnel before being taken to France in a military aircraft. They had thus been under the control of the French authorities for four days and some twenty hours in one case (Ali Samatar and Others), and for six days and sixteen hours in the other (Hassan and Others), before being held in police custody for forty-eight hours and brought before an investigating judge, who placed them under judicial investigation. The charges included the hijacking of a vessel and the arrest and arbitrary confinement of a number of individuals as hostages with the aim of obtaining a ransom. Six of the applicants received prison sentences.

Law – Article 5 § 1 (Hassan and Others): There had been “plausible reasons” to suspect the applicants of committing offences and they had been arrested and detained for the purpose of being brought before the competent legal authority, within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention. In addition, in the light of Resolution 1816 of the United Nations Security Council and its clear aim – to repress acts of piracy and armed robbery off the coast of Somalia – the French authorities’ intervention in Somali territorial waters to arrest individuals suspected of committing acts of “piracy” on the high seas against a French vessel and French citizens had been “foreseeable”. The applicants had been able to foresee, to a reasonable degree in the circumstances of the case, that by hijacking the French vessel and taking its crew hostage they might be arrested and detained by the French forces for the purposes of being brought before the French courts.

However, the law applicable at the relevant time to the situation of individuals arre