Communicated on 2 December 2015
SECOND SECTION
Application no. 27810/07
Leonid DORNEAN
against the Republic of Moldova
lodged on 22 June 2007
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Leonid Dornean, is a Moldovan national, who was born in 1951 and lives in Trinca. He is represented before the Court by Mr I. Țurcanu, a lawyer practising in Edineț.
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. After having divorced his wife, the applicant has continued to live in the same house with her and their children, some of whom are adults. He has a hostile relationship with the rest of his former family.
4. On 27 December 2006 his ex-wife and children allegedly assaulted him at their home. His left wrist was broken. The applicant complained to the authorities that he had been injured by slamming the door on his hand.
5. According to a medical report dated 29 December 2006 the applicant had sustained a fracture of the radial bone, an injury considered to be of medium severity and requiring more than 21 days of treatment. According to the report, the injury had been caused by a blunt object, possibly in circumstances such as those described by the applicant.
6. Following the applicant’s complaint, on 2 February 2007 a prosecutor initiated a criminal investigation into the applicant’s ill-treatment by his ex-wife and children. On 1 March 2007 he was officially recognised as the victim of the alleged crime.
7. On 6 March 2007 the prosecutor requested a new expert medical report to be drawn up in order to assess the severity and origin of the applicant’s injury. On the same day a new medical report was prepared, confirming the previous report’s findings.
8. On 2 May 2007 the prosecutor ordered another medical report to be prepared by a medical commission. On 7 May 2007 the Head of the Forensics Department at the Centre of Forensic Medicine (“the Centre”) asked the prosecutor to submit the X-rays of the applicant’s wrist in order to allow the report to be prepared. In the absence of a reply, the doctor repeated his request on 14 September 2007, adding that the report could not be prepared in the absence of the X-ray results. On 4 December 2007 the Centre returned the documents to the prosecutor, informing him that, in the absence of the applicant’s X-ray results, it had been impossible to carry out the examination.
9. On 19 March 2008 the prosecutor discontinued the investigation, finding that the applicant had often provoked scandals with his former family, and that his entire former family denied having caused him any injuries. The prosecutor also referred to the statement by an emergency room doctor, (T.), whom the applicant had asked for help and who had found a soft-tissue bruising on the applicant’s body and another on his left elbow, but no bone fractures. The prosecutor added that the applicant had only gone to the medical expert on 29 December 2006 and not immediately after the incident. Lastly, the applicant had refused to submit his X-ray results, thus preventing the medical commission from drawing up its report.
10. On 10 April 2008 a higher-ranking prosecutor annulled the decision of 19 March 2008 as premature and taken without having established the origin of the applicant’s injury.
11. On 17 May 2008 the prosecutor again discontinued the investigation, essentially for the same reasons as he had done earlier. On 23 June 2008 the investigating judge of the Edineț District Court annulled that decision. The judge found that the investigator had limited his investigation to interviewing members of the applicant’s former family, who had a hostile relationship with him and who, moreover, had described somewhat different versions of the incident. Moreover, one of the doctors, (T.), had been interviewed superficially, another doctor who had seen the applicant after the incident had not been interviewed at all, and a third doctor who had taken the X-ray of the applicant’s wrist had also not been heard. Another expert medical report had been ordered on 2 May 2007 without observing the victim’s rights, such as being informed of the questions asked of the experts. Lastly, the applicant had not been given an explanation about the need to submit the X-ray results, perhaps directly to the Centre.
12. On 21 November 2008 the prosecutor again discontinued the investigation, essentially for the same reasons as he had done earlier. On 3 December 2008 a higher-ranking prosecutor annulled that decision for reasons similar to those relied on by the investigating judge (see paragraph 11 above).
13. On 7 April 2009 the prosecutor ordered a new expert medical report to be drawn up by the Centre. On 21 October 2009 the Centre informed the prosecutor that the applicant’s X-rays were of poor quality and that the applicant would have to have a new X-ray done. On 2 December 2009 the applicant was asked to undergo the examination. The medical commission drew up its report on 9 December 2009 and found signs of a broken radial bone in the applicant’s left wrist. The commission also concluded that this type of injury could have been caused in the manner described by the applicant, but could also have been self-inflicted.
14. On 30 June 2010 the prosecutor discontinued the investigation, essentially for the same reasons as he had done previously, adding that the medical reports did not exclude that the injury had been self-inflicted. That decision was confirmed by a higher-ranking prosecutor on 17 December 2010.
15. On 25 July 2011 the investigating judge of the Bălți District Court upheld the decisions of 30 June and 17 December 2010. The judge found that the investigator had taken all the possible measures to investigate the case, and the witnesses had not confirmed the applicant’s version of the events and had even contradicted it by stating that on 12 January 2007 they had been out cutting wood with the applicant and had not observed any injury to his wrist.
COMPLAINT
16. The applicant complains under Article 3 that the authorities treated him in an inhuman manner, taking the side of his former family, disregarding or failing to formally examine his complaints about ill-treatment and other damage caused by his former family.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of Article 3 of the Convention in its procedural aspect? In particular, has there been an effective and expeditious investigation into the applicant’s complaint about ill-treatment?
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