Communicated on 19 March 2015
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 28405/11
Lasha GETIASHVILI and Zurab KHACHIDZE
against Georgia
lodged on 1 April 2011
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicants, Mr Lasha Getiashvili and Mr Zurab Khachidze, are Georgian nationals, who were born in 1981 and 1975 respectively and are detained in Rustavi and Ksani. They are represented before the Court by Ms N. Pilauri, a lawyer practising in Tbilisi.
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
3. At the material time, the applicants, being placed in the same cell, were serving their prison terms in the prison No. 7 establishment in Ksani. According to the applicants, on the night of 19 August 2010 two senior staff of the prison entered the applicants’ cell and with verbal insult pushed them out of the cell to the corridor; after the applicants stepped out of their cell, a team of the special forces of the Ministry of Corrections and Legal Aid (“the special forces”) started to beat them with batons; the beating and verbal insult continued as the applicants were stripped and lined up against the wall in the corridor; the aforementioned senior staff of the prison also participated in the beating, telling the applicants that their ill-treatment would be systematic unless they withdrew their application lodged earlier in the Court; after the beating, the applicants, being still naked, were brought back to their cell.
4. The applicants further claim that in about an hour, the prison staff and the special forces came back and beat them again. Their subsequent requests for medical assistance were allegedly met with inaction and more verbal insult by the prison staff; the applicants also were not allowed to contact either their lawyer or the Office of the Public Defender of Georgia (“the PDO”).
5. On 26 August 2010 the applicants’ lawyer visited them in prison. Next day she wrote a letter to the Minister of the Corrections and Legal Aid about the alleged acts of ill-treatment and requested the opening of a criminal investigation as well as conducting an expert medical examination of the applicants.
6. On 1 September 2010, the PDO monitoring team, including a physician, visited the applicants in prison. In his subsequent report about the visit, the PDO doctor noted that the first applicant had multiple bruises all over his body and had pains in the area of kidneys; the visual examination of the second applicant was not conducted because, according to his own statements, by the time of the PDO’s visit, the second applicant had no remaining visible marks of beating on his body; the second applicant also had pain in the area of his kidneys and liver. The PDO subsequently sent the report, with an accompanying letter, to the Chief Prosecutor of Georgia requesting, inter alia, investigation into the alleged beating of the applicants.
7. On 2 September 2010 the first applicant sent a separate complaint to the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of Georgia again requesting the investigation of the alleged beating.
8. On 21 March 2011, in response to her enquiries, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of Georgia informed the applicants’ lawyer that the investigation into the alleged acts of ill-treatment had been opened on 1 September 2010 by the investigation department of the Ministry of Corrections and Legal Aid; several witnesses had been examined and the medical expertise had been conducted; the investigation was still ongoing.
9. According to the applicants, by the time of submission of the present application, they had not been given the victim status in the ongoing criminal investigation.
COMPLAINTS
10. The applicants complain under Article 3 of the Convention, taken separately as well as in conjunction with Article 13 of the Convention, about their alleged beating in the prison No. 7 establishment in Ksani and the lack of effective investigation thereof.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Have the applicants been subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment, in breach of Article 3 of the Convention?
2. Have the domestic authorities fulfilled their obligations vis-à-vis the applicants with regard to the procedural limb of the prohibition of torture under Article 3 of the Convention (see paragraph 131 of Labita v. Italy [GC], no. 26772/95, ECHR 2000-IV)?
3. Did the applicants have at their disposal an effective domestic remedy for their complaints under Article 3 of the Convention, as required by Article 13 of the Convention?
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