Göktepe and Others v. Turkey (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 74

April 2005

Göktepe and Others v. Turkey (dec.) - 64731/01

Decision 26.4.2005 [Section II]

Article 34

Victim

Death of a family member: establishment of illegal facts, identification and conviction of those responsible, and payment of compensation: inadmissible

The applicants are the mother, brother and sister of a journalist who died in service in 1996. He had been covering a funeral ceremony which turned into a demonstration. The police intervened and took a large number of people, including the journalist, into custody in a sports hall. The journalist complained of a headache. The police carried him to a bench outside. He was found dead there several hours later. An autopsy conducted the following day gave the cause of death as cranial trauma. One of the deceased’s brothers lodged a complaint. An internal administrative inquiry was opened by the police. It found that police officers had beaten some of the people lying on the floor of the sports hall. An administrative investigation conducted under the Prosecution of Civil Servants Act concluded that criminal proceedings should be instituted against the police officers in question. Proceedings were promptly brought against forty-eight police officers for unintentional homicide and ill-treatment. A prosecution witness before the Assize Court identified certain police officers. An additional medical examination found that the victim’s death had been caused by blows to the head with an object such as a truncheon. Two years and two months after the events, the Assize Court convicted several police officers and sentenced them to seven and a half years’ imprisonment for assault committed as part of a group, as no individual perpetrator could be identified. The applicants obtained a finding of liability on the State’s part and were awarded compensation for the non-pecuniary and pecuniary damage sustained as a result of the death.

Inadmissible under Article 2: The autopsy reports and the investigation had shown that the death had been caused by blows inflicted unlawfully by the police. The investigation had led rapidly to the identification of the police officers responsible and to their prosecution for unintentional homicide committed in excess of their duties and for ill-treatment. The inquiries made had enabled the facts to be established and the perpetrators identified promptly and to an adequate degree. The criminal proceedings, which had resulted in non-suspended prison sentences for six police officers, had satisfied the procedural requirements of Article 2. The applicants had been awarded compensation for the death of their close relative. In short, they had successfully made use of existing domestic remedies and could no longer claim to be “victims” within the meaning of Article 34.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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