Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 180
December 2014
Ali Samatar and Others v. France - 17110/10 and 17301/10
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
[This summary also covers the judgment in the case of Hassan and Others v. France - 46695/10 and 54588/10, 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 arrested by French forces for acts of piracy on the high seas did not include any rule defining the conditions of deprivation of liberty that would subsequently be imposed on them pending their appearance before the competent legal authority. Consequently, the legal system in force at the relevant time did not provide sufficient protection against arbitrary interference with the right to liberty and security.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 5 § 3 (both cases): The context in which the applicants had been arrested was out of the ordinary. The French authorities had intervened 6,000 km from mainland France, to repress acts of piracy of which vessels flying the French flag and a number of its citizens had been victims; acts committed by Somalis off the coast of Somalia in an area where piracy was becoming alarmingly rife, whilst the Somali authorities lacked the capacity to deal with such offences. It was understandable that, being aware that the Somali authorities would have been incapable of putting the applicants on trial, the French authorities could not have envisaged handing them over. Moreover, the length of time required for their transfer to France had largely been due to the need to obtain prior authorisation from the Somali authorities and the resulting delays caused by the shortcomings in the administrative procedures in that country. There was nothing to suggest that the transfer had taken longer than necessary. There had been some “wholly exceptional circumstances” which explained the length of the deprivation of liberty endured by the applicants between their arrest and their arrival on French soil.
On their arrival in France, however, the applicants had been taken into police custody for forty-eight hours rather than being brought immediately before an investigating judge. There had been nothing to justify that additional delay. At least eleven days in one case, and eighteen days in the other, had thus elapsed between the French authorities’ decision to intervene and the applicants’ arrival in France, and the French authorities could have made use of that time to prepare for them to be brought “promptly” before the competent legal authority.
As regards the French Government’s argument that the applicants’ period in police custody had been necessary for the purposes of the investigation, the Court’s case-law to the effect that periods of two or three days before the initial appearance before a judge did not breach the promptness requirement under Article 5 § 3 was not designed to afford the authorities an opportunity to intensify their investigations for the purpose of gathering the requisite evidence on the basis of which the suspects could be formally charged by an investigating judge. It could not be inferred from that case-law that the Court sought to afford the domestic authorities an opportunity to build the case for the prosecution as they saw fit.
Consequently, there had been a violation of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention on account of the fact that on their arrival in France, the applicants, who had already been detained for long periods, had been taken into police custody rather than being brought “promptly” before a “judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power”.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 2,000 to each of the applicants in Ali Samatar and Others and EUR 5,000 to each of the applicants in Hassan and Others in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See also Medvedyev and Others v. France [GC], 3394/03, 29 March 2010, Information Note 128; Rigopoulos v. Spain, 37388/97, 12 January 1999, Information Note 2; and Vassis and Others v. France, 62736/09, 27 June 2013, Information Note 164)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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