Published on 4 August 2025
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 46654/20
Fatih Özgür AYDIN
against Türkiye
lodged on 12 October 2020
communicated on 15 July 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the applicant’s allegations of ill-treatment in prison.
At the time of the events, the applicant was detained in Adana F-Type Prison. On 19 August 2019 the prison guards entered the applicant’s ward to take one of the inmates, R.A., for the execution of his three-day solitary confinement. When R.A. resisted leaving his ward, the guards intervened physically to take him to a solitary confinement cell. The applicant got involved in the ensuing altercation between the prison guards and some of the detainees in the ward.
A medical report drawn up on 20 August 2019 by the doctor at the infirmary of the prison noted a 3x1 cm bruise on the applicant’s right hip. A second medical report drawn up by the Adana Forensic Medicine Institution on 23 August 2019 noted a yellow-light green coloured ecchymosis in an area of approximately 12x2 cm on the back of the applicant’s right shoulder, pain in his back, pain in his left shoulder and right elbow due to a bending which occurred during the incident, and a 7x4 cm ecchymosis with a purple centre and yellow-light green edges on the upper lateral part of his right hip. The report concluded that the injuries sustained were not life-threatening, were of a mild nature and could be treated with simple medical intervention, and no bone fractures had been reported in the body.
On 21 August 2019 the applicant submitted a criminal complaint to the Adana Public Prosecutor’s Office, claiming that he had been subjected to ill‑treatment by the prison guard C. He stated that that prison guard had hit him multiple times with a baton, causing injuries on different parts of his body. On 28 October 2019 the public prosecutor issued a decision not to prosecute any prison guards. Relying on the statements of three guards and a witness, the incident report signed by prison guards, the CCTV footage of the prison hallway and an expert report analysing the footage, the public prosecutor stated that the prison guards’ use of force against the applicant had been necessary and proportionate as he had resisted against them when they had attempted to take R.A. to a solitary confinement cell. The Adana Magistrate’s Court rejected an objection lodged by the applicant against that decision.
On 2 July 2020 the Constitutional Court rejected the applicant’s individual application for being manifestly ill-founded.
Relying on Article 3 of the Convention, the applicant submits that he was subjected to ill-treatment by the prison guards on 19 August 2019, and that the investigation into his allegations of ill-treatment was ineffective.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the applicant been subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment at the hands of State agents in prison, in breach of Article 3 of the Convention (see Bouyid v. Belgium [GC], no. 23380/09, §§ 81-90 and 100-01, ECHR 2015)?
2. Having regard to the procedural protection from inhuman or degrading treatment, was the investigation in the present case by the domestic authorities in breach of Article 3 of the Convention (see Bouyid, cited above, §§ 114-23)?