Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 95
March 2007
Castravet v. Moldova - 23393/05
Judgment 13.3.2007 [Section IV]
Article 5
Article 5-4
Take proceedings
Remand prisoner prevented from communicating effectively with his lawyer by a glass petition and fear that their discussions were being monitored: violation
Article 5-3
Length of pre-trial detention
Failure to give detailed reasons for the continued detention of a remand prisoner: violation
Facts: The applicant was arrested in May 2005 on charges of embezzlement. At the time he had a job and a fixed abode. He did not have a criminal record. Following, his arrest, he was detained in a remand centre run by the Centre for Fighting Economic Crime and Corruption (CFECC). He made various applications for release, but these were dismissed on the grounds, inter alia, of the seriousness of the offence and the risk of his absconding or obstructing the investigation. His meetings with his lawyer at the remand centre were conducted in a room in which visiting lawyers were separated from the detainees by a glass partition with no aperture. The applicant was released in October 2005.
Law: Article 5(3) – The reasons relied upon by the domestic courts in their decisions to remand the applicant in custody and to prolong his detention merely paraphrased the permitted grounds for detention set out in the Code of Criminal Procedure, without any explanation of how they applied to the applicant’s case. Accordingly, they were not relevant and sufficient.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 5(4) – The applicant was entitled to effective assistance from his lawyer, a key aspect of which was the confidentiality of exchanges between a lawyer and his client. Interference with the lawyer-client privilege did not necessarily require an actual interception or eavesdropping. A genuine belief held on reasonable grounds that a conversation was being listened to could suffice to limit the effectiveness of the assistance, as it inevitably inhibited free discussion and hampered the detainee’s right to challenge the lawfulness of his detention effectively. In the instant case, the applicant’s fear that his conversations with his lawyer were being intercepted appeared genuine. As to whether such fear was reasonable, the entire community of lawyers in Moldova had been seriously concerned about the lack of confidentiality of lawyer-client communications at the CFECC remand centre for some time; the Bar Association had organised a strike to protest about the situation and had unsuccessfully sought permission to check whether monitoring devices had been installed in the glass partition. In these circumstances, the applicant and his lawyer could reasonably have had grounds to believe that their conversations in the CFECC lawyer-client meeting room was not confidential. Contrary to its decision in the case of Sarban v. Moldova, the Court accepted, in the light of the further information it now had at its disposal, that the lack of any aperture in the glass partition was a real impediment to confidential discussion or to an exchange of documents between lawyers and their clients. The case of Kröcher and Müller v. Switzerland was also distinguished on the grounds that the applicants in that case were accused of extremely violent offences whereas the applicant in the instant case did not present any obvious security risk.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41 – EUR 2,500 for non-pecuniary damage.
See also Sarban v. Moldova (no. 3456/05, 4 October 2005); Kröcher and Müller v. Switzerland (no. 8463/78, report of the Commission of 16 December 1982, Decisions and Reports 34, pp. 52-53); Oferta Plus Srl v. Moldova (no. 14385/04, 19 December 2006), referred to in Information Note no. 92; and three further judgments in Moldovan cases which were delivered on 27 March 2007: Istratii (no. 8721/05), Lutcan (no. 8705/05)and Burcovschi (no. 8742/05).
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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