Ciorap v. Moldova (no. 2)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 132

July 2010

Ciorap v. Moldova (no. 2) - 7481/06

Judgment 20.7.2010 [Section IV]

Article 3

Inhuman treatment

Domestic compensation considerably lower than minimum awarded by Court in cases concerning inhuman treatment: violation

Article 34

Victim

Domestic compensation considerably lower than minimum awarded by Court in cases concerning inhuman treatment: victim status upheld

Facts – In 2000 the applicant was arrested and placed in detention. Subsequently, he brought a court claim for compensation for his ill-treatment upon his arrest, a failure to give him medical treatment while in detention and the inhuman conditions in which he says he was detained. In 2007 the Supreme Court held that the denial of medical treatment combined with the conditions of detention, which had aggravated the applicant’s medical condition, had amounted to inhuman treatment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention and awarded the applicant the equivalent of EUR 600 in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 12.60 in respect of pecuniary damage.

Law – Article 3: The Court had to consider first whether the applicant could still claim to be a victim of a violation of Article 3 within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention. On the basis of the material before it, it did not find the applicant’s allegations of torture to be substantiated. There was, however, evidence that the conditions at the police station where the applicant had been detained for two weeks had been very poor. In particular, he had had to sleep on a concrete floor with no bedding, despite suffering from problems with a surgical wound. In addition, he had been denied hospital treatment for eight days contrary to medical advice. These facts had been established by the domestic courts which had, moreover, determined that they amounted to inhuman treatment in breach of Article 3. The Court accepted that conclusion. In the light of the principle of subsidiarity, the Supreme Court’s decision to apply the Convention directly, in the absence of a provision of domestic legislation giving the applicant a right to compensation, was to be commended. The only issue which remained to be determined was the amount of compensation. Even taking into account the relatively short period of the detention in inhuman conditions, the amount in question was considerably below the minimum generally awarded by the Court in cases in which it had found a violation of Article 3 (see, for a recent example, Gavrilovici v. Moldova (no. 25464/05, 15 December 2009) where the Court had awarded the applicant EUR 6,000 in respect of five days’ detention in inhuman conditions; and see also Istratii and Others v. Moldova (nos. 8721/05, 8705/05 and 8742/05, 27 July 2007, Information Note no. 95) where the Court had awarded EUR 6,000 to Mr Istratii, who had been held for approximately two months in inhuman conditions of detention and had suffered a delay of three hours in the provision of emergency medical treatment). The applicant could therefore still claim to be a victim of a violation of Article 3.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 4,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

(See also Kopylov v. Russia, no. 3933/04, 29 July 2010)

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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