THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 34644/17
Aleksey Sergeyevich ANTONOV
against Russia
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 19 March 2019 as a Committee composed of:
Alena Poláčková, President,
Dmitry Dedov,
Jolien Schukking, judges,
and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 27 April 2017,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
PROCEDURE AND THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Aleksey Sergeyevich Antonov, is a Russian national, who was born in 1987. He was represented before the Court by Mr A.V. Vinogradov, a lawyer practising in Kostroma.
2. The Russian Government (“the Government”) were represented by Mr M. Galperin, the Representative of the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human Rights.
3. On 4 September 2017 the applicant’s complaints under Article 3 concerning the conditions of his detention in a psychiatric facility were communicated to the Government. The Government and the applicant submitted their observations on the case.
4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
5. On 30 November 2005 the applicant was legally incapacitated by the decision of the Kostromskoy District Court of Kostroma Region. On 30 January 2006 he was placed under guardianship of his mother.
6. In 2011 the applicant was prosecuted for theft. On 11 April 2011 the District Court established the facts relevant to the charges, but relieved the applicant of criminal liability in connection with his psychiatric condition. The applicant was placed for compulsory treatment in a psychiatric facility Kostroma Specialized Intensive Supervision Psychiatric Hospital.
7. In 2011 – 2017 the applicant’s compulsory treatment was repeatedly prolonged by the Ostrovskiy District Court of Kostroma Region.
8. On 3 July 2017 due to improvement in the applicant’s mental health he was transferred to the Kostroma Regional Psychiatric Hospital.
COMPLAINT
9. The applicant complained under Article 3 of the Convention about allegedly inhuman and degrading conditions in a psychiatric facility.
THE LAW
10. As regards the applicant’s complaints under Article 3 of the Convention the Court notes that the parties in their submissions provided the following conflicting accounts.
11. According to the applicant’s submissions during his stay in the psychiatric hospital he was kept in overcrowded rooms with poor sanitary conditions (5-6 patients in a room of less than 8 sq.m., restricted access to toilet and sanitary faciltities). In support of his account the applicant referred to a letter of another patient published on a website and allegedly describing the condition in the facility in 2011.
12. The Government in their observations disagreed with the applicant’s allegations. They stated that the applicant had been kept in two treatment wards of the Kostroma Specialized Intensive Supervision Psychiatric Hospital: 1) ward no. 3 with maximum capacity of 60 patients in 10 rooms and the total floor surface of 189,8 sq.m. and 2) ward no. 4 with maximum capacity of 50 patients in 9 rooms and the total floor surface of 169,1 sq.m. In support of their account they provided a letter from the Ministry of Health date 2 November 2018, which included the above facts.
13. The Court reiterates that allegations of ill-treatment must be supported by appropriate evidence. In assessing evidence, the Court has adopted the standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt”. According to its established case-law, proof may as well follow from the coexistence of sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact. The level of persuasion necessary for reaching a particular conclusion and the distribution of the burden of proof are intrinsically linked to the specificity of the facts, the nature of the allegation made and the Convention right at stake (see, among others, Nachova and Others v. Bulgaria [GC], nos. 43577/98 and 43579/98, § 147, ECHR 2005‑VII; Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia [GC], no. 48787/99, § 26, ECHR 2004-VII).
14. In the present case the applicant in support of his Article 3 complaint provided only his own description of the alleged conditions of detention and a reference to a letter from another patient published on an Internet site more than seven years ago. Admittedly, for “overcrowding complaints” concerning Russian pre-trial detention facilities this meagre evidentiary basis could have been sufficient in the light of the recurrent and systemic problem identified in the Ananyev and Others v. Russia judgment (nos. 42525/07 and 60800/08, §§ 179-90, 10 January 2012).
15. The present case is distinctly different, since it concerns conditions of detention in high security psychiatric facilties. In absence of the identified systemic problem, as well as coexistence of any sufficiently strong, clear and concordant inferences or of similar unrebutted presumptions of fact, the Court reaches the conclusion that the applicant failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he had been subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention. Accordingly, the present application is manifestly ill-founded and must be declared inadmissible under Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 11 April 2019.
Fatoş AracıAlena Poláčková
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy