Legal summary
July 2025
Gullotti v. Italy - 64753/14
Judgment 10.7.2025 [Section I]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for correspondence
Unjustified additional limitation of applicant’s right to correspondence during special regime detention: violation
Facts – The applicant, convicted of mafia-type offences, was imprisoned under the special regime provided for in section 41 bis of the Prison Administration Act, consisting of, inter alia, limited visits by family members. He was subjected to the monitoring of his correspondence between July 2012 and May 2013. At least from December 2012, under section 18 ter of the Act, his right to correspondence was limited to relatives admitted for family visits. Following the prison governor’s request of 7 January 2013 and on the basis of the “dossier concerning the applicant”, on 8 January 2013 the sentence supervision judge renewed this limitation for three months. The decision was justified by the applicant’s maintenance of a prominent role within the mafia-type organisation, Cosa Nostra, despite his continued detention since 1998. The Bologna sentence supervision court upheld the order of 8 January 2013 and in March 2014 the Court of Cassation declared the applicant’s appeal on points of law inadmissible, finding that the limitation was justified.
While these appeal proceedings were still pending, the sentence supervision judge renewed the limitation in question in April, July and October 2013 for a duration of three months each time.
In October 2013 the Minister of Justice renewed the application of the section 41 bis regime for two years because the applicant had been and still was the leader of a mafia-clan.
In November 2013 the Bologna sentence supervision court granted an appeal by the applicant in which he argued that the order of April 2013 was inadequately reasoned. Subsequently, the applicant requested that the orders of July and October 2013 be declared unlawful as based on the same arguments as the order of April 2013, but the Bologna sentence supervision court found the request inadmissible as it was not provided for by the Prison Administration Act.
In December 2013, after taking note of the November order of the Bologna sentence supervision court, the sentence supervision judge rejected a new request of the prison governor to renew the limitation of applicant’s right to correspondence for a further three months.
The applicant complained that the limitation on his right to correspondence breached the Article 8 of the Convention as the order of 8 January 2013 (“the impugned order”) and the subsequent domestic decisions in the appeal proceedings had not been adequately reasoned.
Law – Article 8:
Even though the applicant could maintain contact with his close family, representatives and other public bodies, limiting the number of people with whom he could maintain correspondence had constituted an interference with his right under Article 8.
The interference had been prescribed by law, namely section 18 ter of the Prison Administration Act. This provision, differently from section 18 considered by the Court as not being in accordance with Article 8 (Enea v. Italy, Labita v. Italy), provided that the measure be adopted with reasoned order by the judicial authority under specific circumstances and for a limited period of time. Therefore, the authorities had no longer been granted unfettered discretion.
The interference had pursued legitimate aims, namely the protection of public order and national security and the prevention of disorder and crime, by ensuring that correspondence was not used as a means of conveying prohibited messages.
As regards the necessity of the interference, in order to determine whether it had been convincingly justified, the Court had to assess whether the reasons provided by the national authorities had been “relevant and sufficient” and whether the measure taken had been “proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued”.
While the impugned order broadly referred to the applicant’s maintenance of a prominent role within the organisation, there appeared to be no discernible trace in the text of that order of an explicit and autonomous assessment of the need to limit the applicant’s correspondence to only relatives admitted for family visits, as would have been required by section 18 ter of the Prison Administration Act.
in the light of the close link between the ministerial order applying the section 41 bis regime and the judicial order imposing monitoring of correspondence, the reasons for the latter could be clearly traced back to those advanced by the Minister of Justice. However, as limiting the number of people with whom a prisoner could maintain correspondence amounted to an additional limitation of the applicant’s right, the Court was not convinced that a general reference to the ministerial order was in itself sufficient to justify further restrictions. The autonomy of the impugned order rather suggested the need for individualised reasons, or at least an explanation of the reasons why the general monitoring of the prisoner’s correspondence, without limitations as to the senders or addressees, had been deemed insufficient.
In any event, the impugned order did not refer to the ministerial order renewing the section 41 bis regime, but generally to the “dossier concerning the applicant”. Although it was reasonable to presume that the dossier available to the sentence supervision judge had included the ministerial order, the Court was not able to assess which documents had been in concreto taken into account. Moreover, the Government had failed to provide a copy of the ministerial order in force at that time. The parties had only provided the ministerial order of 30 October 2013 renewing the section 41 bis regime, which had referred to wiretapped conversations between the applicant and members of the criminal organisation to which he had belonged, during which the impossibility of contacting the applicant in person or by mail had been discussed. Even assuming that that information had also been contained in the ministerial order in force at the relevant time and that its seriousness had justified further limitations of the applicant’s right to correspondence, the domestic authorities had failed to clarify the importance of such information, especially considering that the wiretapped conversations in question appeared to have taken place about ten years before.
Whereas the sentence supervision judge had referred to the request submitted by the prison governor in January 2013, the Government had failed to produce it to the Court, instead submitting his extension request of March 2013 and granted in April 2013. It was not possible to determine whether the information which had possibly been relevant with a view to applying further limitations on the applicant’s right to correspondence had also been contained in the prison governor’s request of 7 January 2013.
Lastly, the domestic authorities had raised no additional arguments to justify the limitation in the appeal proceedings concerning the impugned 2013 order. In the appeal proceedings against the subsequent order of April 2013, which had been grounded on the same arguments as the impugned order, the Bologna sentence supervision court had found the reasoning insufficient. The reasoning of this court had been reaffirmed by the sentence supervision judge in December 2013.
The lack of any explicit reference to specific circumstances justifying the additional limitation on the applicant’s right to correspondence and the Government’s failure to provide the documents that might have supplemented the reasoning of the impugned order made it difficult to ascertain which circumstances, had been weighed up, in what manner and to what extent, when assessing whether to renew the restriction. Accordingly, there was insufficient evidence in the reasoning of the impugned order of a genuine assessment having been made.
In the light of the foregoing, the Court was not persuaded that the Government had convincingly demonstrated that, in the case circumstances, the renewal of the limitation of the applicant’s right to correspondence of 8 January 2013 had been justified.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: finding of a violation sufficient in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
(See Enea v. Italy [GC], 74912/01, 17 September 2009, Legal Summary; Labita v. Italy [GC], 26772/95, 6 April 2000, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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