Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 98
June 2007
Harutyunyan v. Armenia - 36549/03
Judgment 28.6.2007 [Section III]
Article 6
Criminal proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Use at trial of statements obtained from the accused and witnesses through torture: violation
Facts: In 1998 the applicant was drafted into the army. In 2002 the applicant was found guilty of premeditated murder of a fellow serviceman and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. The court relied, inter alia, on the applicant's confession and on the testimony of two other servicemen, while acknowledging that coercion had been applied to them. The police officers at issue were subsequently found guilty of abuse of power and sentenced to imprisonment. The court established that they had beaten the applicant and the two witnesses with a rubber club, squeezed their fingernails with pliers and clubbed their soles, causing injuries of various degrees. By threatening to continue the ill-treatment, they had forced the applicant to confess to murder, and the two servicemen to state that they had witnessed it. They had also threatened the victims with retaliation if they informed any higher authority about the ill‑treatment. Referring to the above findings, the applicant lodged unsuccessful appeals against his conviction.
Law: The applicant had been coerced into making confession statements and the two witnesses into making statements substantiating his guilt. The statements obtained under duress had been used as evidence, despite the fact that ill‑treatment had already been established in parallel proceedings instituted against the police officers in question. The domestic courts had justified the use of these statements by the fact that the applicant had confessed to the investigator and not to the police officers and by the fact that both witnesses had made similar statements later, at the confrontation and at the hearing. The European Court, however, was not convinced by such justification. Where there was compelling evidence that a person had been subjected to ill-treatment, including physical violence and threats, the fact that this person had confessed – or confirmed a coerced confession in his later statements – to an authority other than the one responsible for this ill-treatment should not automatically lead to the conclusion that such confession or later statements had not been made as a consequence of the ill-treatment and the fear that a person might experience thereafter. There had been ample evidence before the domestic courts that the witnesses had been subjected to continued threats of further torture and retaliation. Furthermore, the fact that they had still been performing military service could undoubtedly have added to their fear and affected their statements, which was confirmed by the fact that the nature of those statements had essentially changed after demobilisation. Hence, the credibility of the statements made by them during that period should have been seriously questioned, and these statements should certainly not have been relied upon. Regardless of the impact the statements obtained under torture had had on the outcome of the applicant's criminal proceedings, the use of such evidence had rendered the trial as a whole unfair.
Article 41 – EUR 4,000 for 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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