SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 68879/14
Nedeljko ĆOSIĆ
against Croatia
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 14 March 2017 as a Committee composed of:
Jon Fridrik Kjølbro, President,
Ksenija Turković,
Georges Ravarani, judges,
and Hasan Bakırcı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 17 October 2014,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Nedeljko Ćosić, is a Swiss national who was born in 1960 and lives in Winterthur. He was represented before the Court by Mr S. Štimac, a lawyer practising in Split, Croatia.
2. The Croatian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Ms Š. Stažnik.
3. On 2 June 2016 the Government of Switzerland was informed of the case and invited to exercise their right to intervene if they wished to do so. No reply has been received.
The circumstances of the case
4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
5. The applicant’s father, M.Ć., disappeared in May 1992. On 5 May 2009 the applicant wrote to the State Attorney’s Office, enquiring about his father. This was forwarded to the Split County State Attorney’s Office (hereinafter “the SCSAO”) which asked Split Hospital for the relevant information. The hospital replied on 3 July 2009 and submitted the father’s medical record which showed that he had been treated in Split Military Hospital between 1 and 3 May 1992 and that doctors had decided to amputate his leg, which he had refused. He had then been taken to Lora Military Prison. His further fate remains uncertain.
6. On 5 November 1997 Croatia ratified the Convention.
7. On 7 July 2009 the SCSAO asked the Split Police to carry out the necessary steps in order to establish the circumstances of M.Ć.’s disappearance. On 21 September the police informed the SCSAO that M.Ć. had not been registered as a detainee in Lora Prison. The SCSAO also found that M.Ć. had not been listed among the victims of war crimes allegedly committed in Lora Prison.
8. On 15 October 2009 the SCSAO informed the applicant that it had not been possible to ascertain his father’s fate.
9. On 11 November 2009 the Split Police received a request from Interpol Sarajevo to look into the circumstances of M.Ć.’s disappearance. Following that request, between 6 and 19 December 2011 the police interviewed T.B., F.Č., B.Z. and J.T., doctors who had worked in Split Hospital in the relevant period. Owing to the passage of time, none of them could remember anything about what had happened to M.Ć.
10. On 25 March 2014 the applicant filed a criminal complaint against unidentified people with the Split County State Attorney’s Office. He asked that the doctors and other medical personnel who had had contact with his father in May 1992 at Split Hospital be interviewed in order to establish where his father had been sent after leaving hospital.
11. By a letter of 7 April 2014 the SCSAO informed the applicant’s lawyer that there were no grounds to believe that a criminal offence had been committed in respect of the applicant’s father.
COMPLAINTS
12. The applicant complained under Article 2 of the Convention that no effective investigation into the disappearance of his father had been carried out.
13. He further complained under Article 8 of the Convention that he had not been informed of his father’s burial place.
THE LAW
A. Alleged violation of the procedural aspect of Article 2 of the Convention
14. The applicant complained that the authorities had not taken appropriate and adequate steps to investigate his father’s disappearance. He relied on Article 2 of the Convention which, in so far as relevant, reads as follows:
“1. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. ...”
1. The parties’ submissions
15. The Government argued that the application had been lodged outside the six-month time-limit since the applicant had remained passive for many years after his father’s disappearance. They further submitted that the national authorities had taken all the relevant steps to establish the circumstances of the disappearance but no tangible results had been achieved owing to the passage of time.
16. The applicant argued that the investigation in question had been superficial. He stressed in particular that none of his father’s close relatives or neighbours in the village in which he had lived had been interviewed. He also complained that neither he nor any other of his father’s relatives had been involved in the investigation.
2. The Court’s assessment
17. The Court does not have to address all the issues raised by the parties, as this part of the application is in any event inadmissible for the following reasons.
18. The obligation to protect the right to life under Article 2 of the Convention, read in conjunction with the State’s general duty under Article 1 of the Convention to “secure to everyone within [its] jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in [the] Convention”, also requires by implication that there should be some form of effective official investigation when individuals have been killed as a result of the use of force (see, mutatis mutandis, McCann and Others, 27 September 1995, § 161, Series A no. 324; Kaya v. Turkey, 19 February 1998, § 86, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998-I; and B. and Others v. Croatia, no. 71593/11, § 57, 18 June 2015). The investigation must be effective in the sense that it is capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible (see Oğur v. Turkey [GC], no. 21594/93, § 88, ECHR 1999‑III). However, the Court has deemed the scope of the above-mentioned obligation to conduct an effective investigation as constituting an obligation as to means, not as to results (see, for example, Shanaghan v. the United Kingdom, no. 37715/97, § 90, 4 May 2001, and the judgments referred to therein).
19. The Court notes that the national authorities learned for the first time about the disappearance of the applicant’s father in 2009 and began a police enquiry. The Court would note that the Croatian authorities interviewed all the available witnesses and the available evidence was collected and reviewed (see paragraphs 5-7 above). None of the witnesses had any knowledge relevant to the circumstances in which the applicant’s father had disappeared. No other leads have been discovered.
20. As regards the adequacy of the steps taken by the Croatian authorities in connection with the disappearance of the applicant’s father, the Court is not persuaded by the applicant’s submission that there have been significant oversights or omissions. The facts of the case show that the police pursued every line of enquiry (contrast to Charalambous and Others v. Turkey (dec.), no. 46744/07, § 65, 3 April 2012). However, they did not lead to any firm conclusions about the fate of the applicant’s father.
21. As to the applicant’s allegation that none of M.Ć.’s close relatives or neighbours were interviewed, the Court notes that the applicant has not pointed to any particular information they might have had about the disappearance. In that connection the Court notes that the people concerned mainly reside in a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina where the applicant’s father had lived whereas he actually disappeared in Split in Croatia, allegedly in Lora Prison. He has also not indicated other concrete avenues of enquiry that the police could have pursued. In the circumstances, the Court cannot impugn the authorities for any culpable disregard, discernible bad faith or lack of will (compare to Gürtekin and Others v. Cyprus (dec.), nos. 60441/13et al., § 27, 11 March 2014).
22. As regards the involvement of the applicant and other relatives in the enquiry into M.Ć.’s disappearance, the Court notes that under national law close relatives of a victim are able to seek information about the progress of an investigation and to ask for leave to consult the case file. The applicant has not shown that he was denied any of those rights.
23. Against that background, in the light of all the material in its possession and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, the Court finds that they do not disclose any appearance of a violation of the procedural aspect of Article 2 of the Convention. It follows that this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected, in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
B. Alleged violation of Article 8 of the Convention
24. The applicant complained that the failure of the national authorities to establish the fate of his father meant he had never learned where his father had been buried. He relied on Article 8 of the Convention, the relevant part of which reads as follows:
“1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life ...
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
25. The Government contested the complaint.
26. The Court has already concluded that the national authorities cannot be blamed for the fact that the circumstances of the applicant’s father’s disappearance have remained unknown. It follows that their inability to inform the applicant about his father’s burial place is not their fault.
27. Accordingly, this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 6 April 2017.
Hasan BakırcıJon Fridrik Kjølbro
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy