Brânduşe v. Romania (communicated case)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 98

June 2007

Brânduşe v. Romania (communicated case) - 6586/03

Decision 31.5.2007 [Section III]

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Prison polluted by foul air and putrid smells from a former waste tip situated in the locality: communicated

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for private life

Failure by the authorities to take steps to neutralise a potentially hazardous former waste tip situated in the immediate vicinity of a prison: communicated

Respect for correspondence

Alleged lack of confidentiality of conversations on prison telephones owing to obligation to supply the telephone numbers and to converse in the presence of a warder: communicated

The applicant was placed in pre-trial detention under suspicion of having incited someone to commit fraud. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.

During his pre-trial detention the applicant was held on police premises. He had access to the toilets only twice a day. The rest of the time he and his cell-mates had to use a plastic bucket, which remained in the cell. When transferred to prison he had to share a cell measuring about 38 m2 with twenty-seven other detainees; the cell had eighteen beds and only one window and there was no hot water in the sink. His prison clothes were over twenty years old and sometimes he had no sheets or covers. The quality of the food was very poor. A warder stood by during the applicant's telephone conversations with people on the outside, and the applicant had to inform the prison authorities of the numbers he wished to call, so that they could be noted down in a register.

One of the prisons he was held in was about twenty yards away from an old refuse tip, which had been closed but not covered over or otherwise rehabilitated. People continued to discard refuse there. Flies, insects and birds would fly from the refuse tip into the cell, bringing a risk of infection, as the detainees also kept food in the cell, having nowhere else to put it. The waste also gave off sickening smells. In answer to a letter from the applicant, the prefect announced that a firm intended to buy the public land concerned and rehabilitate it. The municipality maintained that the old refuse tip had been closed and was no longer in use, and that a firm had drafted an environmental report and was keeping the site under constant supervision. A scheme to neutralise the refuse was under study. The applicant brought a case before the Court of First Instance, based on the Government's urgent order concerning certain rights of persons serving custodial sentences, complaining in particular of the hygiene conditions in police custody and in a prison, the lack of a refrigerator and the foul air and pestilential smells from the nearby rubbish dump he had to put up with in the prison in question. The court dismissed the case as ill-founded and the County Court rejected the appeal against that decision. An 'extremely powerful' fire subsequently engulfed the site, kindled by the emanations of methane from the deeper layers of refuse.

Communicated under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention ; declared inadmissible as to the remainder.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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