SECOND SECTION
Application no. 15022/08
Kemal HACIÖMEROĞLU
against Turkey
lodged on 24 March 2008
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Kemal Hacıömeroğlu, is a Turkish national, who was born in 1955 and lives in Ankara. He is represented before the Court by Mr Mehmet Özşahin, a lawyer practising in Ankara.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant and as they appear from the documents submitted by him, may be summarised as follows.
On 6 February 2005 a road traffic accident took place in Ankara which resulted in the deaths of four persons, including the applicant’s wife, son and daughter. The car driven by the applicant’s son went over on to the lane of the oncoming traffic and collided with two other cars there.
The accident occurred on a stretch of motorway with a 4 metre-wide central reservation. The central reservation was being rebuilt by a contracting company at the time of the accident, but it did not have any concrete blocks to separate it from the road.
On the day of the accident a report was issued by the police which mentioned the existence of damaged traffic signs for the road maintenance work. However, the police did not preserve the damaged signboards as evidence, and the prosecutor did not attend the accident scene that day in order to supervise the police officers.
Another report which was drawn up by police officers on 10 February 2005 stated that there were no traffic signs at the scene.
Three experts from the regional police office, whose names do not appear in the report, arrived at the accident site to take photographs and to prepare a report. The report stated that there were damaged warning signs at the side of the road, some ten metres away from the place where the accident had taken place.
According to the applicant, there were no warning signs for the road maintenance work and all the evidence at the accident scene had been destroyed by the employees of the contracting company soon after the accident.
Nine months after the accident, on 18 November 2005, the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office submitted a bill of indictment to the Ankara Assize Court in which he charged the two drivers who were involved in the accident, as well as the person in charge of the contracting company that had undertaken the road maintenance work. The Ankara Assize Court accepted the indictment and a criminal case was thus opened against the accused persons.
On 9 October 2006 the Ankara Assize Court decided to acquit all defendants on the ground that they had not behaved negligently. The Assize Court considered that the applicant’s son, who had died in the accident, had caused the accident by losing control of his car.
On 24 September 2007 the Court of Cassation rejected an appeal lodged by the applicant, and upheld the judgment of the first instance court.
Acting on a request from the applicant, the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation decided to take the case to the Grand Chamber of the Court of Cassation’s Criminal Division. In his request the Chief Prosecutor argued that the first instance court had failed to examine whether the precautions laid down in the Standards for Traffic Markings in Road Construction and Maintenance and Repairs, which were published by the General Directorate for Highways and which set out in detail the requirements for road warning signs, had been observed during the road maintenance work. He also argued that the evidence in the case file had not been collected properly by the police during the investigation stage and that the conflicting information emanating from the evidence in the file regarding the existence of traffic signs had not been eliminated by the first instance court.
On 27 November 2007 the objections of the Chief Prosecutor were rejected by the Grand Chamber of the Court of Cassation’s Criminal Division.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Articles 2, 6 and 13 of the Convention that the necessary measures to protect the lives of his son, daughter and wife were not taken by the State.
He further complains that an effective investigation was not carried out in accordance with Article 2 of the Convention regarding the accident. In this connection the applicant argues that the investigating prosecutor did not go to the accident scene to carry out the necessary examinations and to supervise the police officers when collecting the evidence. The applicant also complains that the investigation did not start until some nine months after the accident.
QUESTIONS
1. Has an effective investigation, within the meaning of Article 2 of the Convention, been conducted into the accident in which the applicant lost three members of his family?
2. Was there in place a regulatory framework and effective procedures capable of ensuring the safety of drivers while the maintenance work was being carried out on the motorway?
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy