Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 127
February 2010
Holland v. Sweden (dec.) - 27700/08
Decision 9.2.2010 [Section III]
Article 34
Hinder the exercise of the right of petition
Destruction of tape recordings from a court hearing before the expiry of the six-month time-limit for lodging an application with the Court: inadmissible
Facts – In 2005 the applicant was convicted of harassment. His conviction was upheld on appeal in February 2006. In April 2006 the Supreme Court refused the applicant leave to appeal and he lodged an application with the European Court, complaining that the criminal trial against him had been unfair. In October 2006 he requested the tape recordings from the oral hearing before the court of appeal and was informed that they had been destroyed in May 2006 in accordance with domestic law, which required them to be kept only for two months following the judgment in the case or, if the judgment was appealed against, until final judgment was rendered. In June 2007 the European Court, sitting in a Committee of three judges, declared his application inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded. In September 2007 the applicant unsuccessfully complained to the Chancellor of Justice that the destruction of the tapes before the expiry of the six-month time-limit established by the European Convention had hindered him from effectively exercising his right of petition contrary to Article 34 of that Convention and was not in accordance with Sweden’s obligations under Article 35. In May 2008 he lodged the present application with the Court raising this issue.
Law – Article 34: The tape recordings had not been destroyed until some three to six weeks after the final decision in the case had been given by the Supreme Court on 12 April 2006. The destruction had consequently been in accordance with Swedish law. Moreover, the applicant had lodged his previous application with the European Court concerning the criminal trial in April 2006, that is, when the tape recordings still existed. He could therefore have requested a copy if he considered that the content of the tapes was of importance to his application before the Court, but he had not done so. Nor had he specified what he intended to do with the tape recordings or what he wanted to prove by producing them before the Court. Furthermore, the essential parts of the statements given during the oral hearing had been recorded in the court of appeal’s judgment and a copy of that judgment had been submitted to the Court and included in the case file. The Court further took into account the fact that the applicant had been informed in October 2006 of the destruction of the tapes, at which point his previous application before the Court was still pending. In the Court’s view, the applicant could reasonably have been expected to have informed the Court of the destruction of the tapes and to have invoked Article 34 at the time, if they were considered essential to his application. However, he had not done this either. In fact, he had lodged the present application only in May 2008, almost one year after his original application had been declared inadmissible and more than seven months after the Chancellor of Justice had replied to his complaint. To the Court, this tended to indicate that the applicant had not considered the tape recordings to be essential to his application. In these specific circumstances, the Court found that the destruction of the tape recordings in May 2006 had not hindered the applicant from effectively exercising his right of petition.
Conclusion: inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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