Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 152
May 2012
Idalov v. Russia [GC] - 5826/03
Judgment 22.5.2012
Article 35
Article 35-1
Six month period
Non-consecutive periods of pre-trial detention treated as separate for purposes of six-month time-limit
Facts – The applicant was arrested on suspicion of abduction and was detained pending trial and officially charged in June 1999. His detention was subsequently extended on a number of occasions until, in July 2001, he was released on bail. Later, in October 2002, the competent court revoked the bail and ordered the applicant’s renewed detention. His detention was repeatedly extended until he was found guilty in November 2003 and sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment.
Law – Article 5 § 3: The applicant complained that his pre-trial detention had been excessively long and had not been based on relevant or sufficient reasons.
(a) Admissibility – Having been detained for approximately two years, the applicant had then been released pending trial and had been at liberty for approximately one year and four months, before being rearrested and detained for a further period of one year and one month. Seeing that he had lodged his application more than six months after the end of his first period of detention, the question arose as to whether the two non-consecutive periods of the applicant’s pre-trial detention should be assessed cumulatively or whether his release for a significant period pending trial had the effect of starting the six-month period referred to in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention in respect of the first period of detention.
The Court’s case-law regarding the application of the six-month rule to multiple non-consecutive periods of pre-trial detention had varied until now, developing along two distinct lines of reasoning. Under the approach taken in Neumeister v. Austria (no. 1936/63, 27 June 1968), although the six-month time-limit precluded a finding as to whether the length of the first period of detention had been “reasonable”, that period should be taken into account when assessing the reasonableness of the second period. On the contrary, under the overall approach subsequently adopted in Kemmache v. France (no. 1 and no. 2) (nos. 12325/86 and 14992/89, 27 November 1991), where an accused person was detained for two or more separate periods pending trial, the reasonable-time guarantee was found to require an overall assessment of the aggregate period instead of an examination of whether the six-month rule should apply. Following the recent return to the Neumeister approach, the Court considered it essential to harmonise the above approaches and to adopt a uniform and foreseeable approach so that the requirements of justice would be better served. The Court therefore held that, where an accused person’s pre-trial detention was broken into several non-consecutive periods, such periods should not be assessed as a whole but separately. Once at liberty, an applicant was obliged to bring any complaint he or she might have concerning pre-trial detention within six months from the date of actual release. However, where different periods formed part of the same set of criminal proceedings, the fact that an applicant had previously spent time in custody pending trial could be taken into consideration. The Court considered that this approach faithfully respected the intention of the Contracting Parties vis-à-vis the six-month rule, whilst simultaneously permitting it to have regard to any previous periods which the applicant had spent in custody. This was also the practice followed in the assessment of complaints concerning the “reasonable-time” requirement in Article 6 of the Convention, and it had the added benefit of promoting the more expeditious conduct of criminal trials at domestic level.
In the present case, the applicant’s pre-trial detention was broken into two non-consecutive periods. Having regard to the above, the six-month rule was to be applied separately to each period of pre-trial detention. The applicant’s complaint concerning his first period of detention should be declared inadmissible as having been lodged out of time. However, the time he had already spent in custody in the context of the same set of criminal proceedings should be taken into account in assessing the sufficiency and relevance of the grounds justifying his subsequent period of pre-trial detention. The applicant’s complaint in respect of his second period of detention was not manifestly ill-founded.
Conclusion: partly inadmissible (unanimously).
(b) Merits – The period of the applicant’s pre-trial detention to be taken into consideration had lasted approximately one year and one month. The national authorities had extended his detention on grounds which, although “relevant”, could not be regarded as “sufficient” to justify its duration.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
The Court also held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 3 on account of the conditions of the applicant’s detention and the conditions in which he had been transferred between the prison and the courthouse; a violation of Article 5 § 4 on account of the failure to examine speedily his appeals against the orders for his pre-trial detention and on account of his absence from the appeal hearings; a violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) and (d) of the Convention on account of the unfairness of his trial following his exclusion from the courtroom; no violation of Article 6 § 1 on account of the length of the criminal proceedings against him; and a violation of Article 8 on account of the opening by the prison authorities of two letters to the applicant from the Court.
Article 41: EUR 7,150 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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