Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 101
October 2007
Fahriye Çalışkan v. Turkey - 40516/98
Judgment 2.10.2007 [Section IV]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Inhuman treatment
Use of excessive force by a police officer against an unaccompanied woman who had been required to attend a police station: violation
Facts: Police officers went to the surgery of the applicant, who is a doctor, to take her to the police station in connection with the apparently unauthorised sale of tickets for a show organised by an association to which she belonged. The police accompanied the applicant to the police station, where she asked to speak with an officer other than S.Ç., an inspector against whom she had previously filed an administrative complaint for various offences, albeit unsuccessfully. According to the applicant, while she was speaking to the deputy inspector, S.Ç. entered the office and rushed towards her. He allegedly insulted her, shook her, hit her on the head and restrained her arms, then pulled her hair and spat in her face. According to the Turkish authorities, the applicant had started insulting inspector S.Ç. as soon as she arrived at the police station, then slapped him. She had then tried to leave the premises and had to be forcibly returned by the police.
The applicant and the inspector were both examined by a doctor on the day of the incident. The doctor reported a hyperaemia (congestion) 5 cm long under the inspector’s left eye; on the applicant he found an ecchymosis and a haematoma 7-8 cm long on the inside of her left arm, a hyperaemia on the left shoulder blade and irritation of the scalp, and concluded that she had probably been beaten.
The applicant, who was feeling unwell, was examined on the same date by a neurologist, who noted that she was suffering from nausea, problems with her vision and a cranial traumatism, and ordered an urgent examination at a neurosurgical unit. This was carried out the next day and revealed a parietal haematoma necessitating five days’ sick leave.
She was re-examined a few days later by doctors from a human rights association, who found bruises measuring 2x7 cm on the back of her right arm and 2x3 cm on her lower right forearm, symptoms of insomnia and amnesia, difficulty in concentrating and anxiety.
S.Ç. filed a complaint against the applicant with the police station, accusing her of insulting and attacking him. At the close of those proceedings the applicant was acquitted on all counts except the slap.
The applicant lodged complaints with the district commissioner’s office then the Public Prosecutor’s Office to open administrative and criminal investigations against the inspector. In support of her claims she submitted the medical reports drawn up on the day of the incident. The prosecuting authorities referred the case to the Provincial Administrative Council, in conformity with the Law on the Prosecution of Civil Servants, and an investigator – the deputy director of the provincial security police – was given the two complaints to examine jointly. In his report the investigator criticised the medical reports, condemning a certain “protectionism” and sympathy on the part of the doctors towards a colleague. Taking that report at face value, the disciplinary board and the administrative council decided that there was no case to answer. The Supreme Administrative Court upheld that finding.
Law: Article 3 – It was not contested that at the material time inspector S.Ç. had used force against the applicant. The medical evidence available was sufficiently corroborative to give credence to the applicant’s allegation that the inspector had pulled her hair, restrained her arms and hit her on the head. Even assuming that the inspector had acted to control the applicant, who was allegedly highly agitated at the relevant time, he had been dealing with a woman alone in a police station, to which she had been brought in connection with a straightforward problem concerning an association. Even filled with resentment on account of having been slapped, an inspector, surrounded by his subordinates, should have shown greater self-control and certainly used other methods than those which had left the applicant unable to work for five days. That treatment had been debasing and likely to inspire disproportionate feelings of fear and vulnerability, and did not correspond to the necessary use of force.
Conclusion: substantive violation of Article 3 (unanimously).
Article 13 – Investigations carried out by administrative bodies like those involved in the present case raised serious doubts as to their independence vis-à-vis the executive. The intervention of the administrative council, which had merely endorsed the conclusions of an investigator who was himself a member of the police, was a factor which had considerably weakened the stringency of the judicial machinery in place, in so far as its implementation had ultimately failed to establish the facts or the possible liability arising from the applicant’s allegations. The procedures initiated had not therefore been effective, in that they had not provided the applicant with any reasonable ground for seeking compensation from the administrative or civil courts since, in either case, it would have been necessary to prove, at the least, that she had been the victim of ill-treatment at the hands of a State agent.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41 – EUR 7,000 for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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