FIFTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 55793/09
Boris KATCHEISHVILI
against Georgia
The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 11 September 2018 as a Committee composed of:
Síofra O’Leary, President,
Lәtif Hüseynov,
Lado Chanturia, judges,
and Milan Blaško, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 1 October 2009,
Having regard to the decision of 24 November 2009,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Boris Katcheishvili, is a Georgian national, who was born in 1966 and lives in Tbilisi. He was represented before the Court by Ms S. Abuladze, a lawyer practising in Tbilisi.
2. The Georgian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr L. Meskhoradze, of the Ministry of Justice.
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. The case concerned the adequacy of the material conditions of the applicant’s detention in Rustavi no. 2 Prison (“Rustavi prison”) from 14 June 2009 to February 2010. According to the material available in the case file, the applicant never made a complaint to any of the competent domestic authorities about the conditions of his detention in Rustavi prison during the period in question.
THE LAW
5. The applicant complained about the inadequacy of the material conditions of his detention in Rustavi prison. He invoked Article 3 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
A. The parties’ arguments
6. The Government submitted that the applicant had not provided an individual account of what exactly the material conditions of his detention in the relevant prison had been. In contrast, they submitted a letter dated 23 February 2010 from the governor of Rustavi prison. That letter, giving the identification numbers of the cells in which the applicant had been detained between 14 June 2009 and February 2010 (cells nos. 10 and 26), provided a detailed description and photographs of the conditions therein at the time of his detention. The cells, which measured 35 square metres, had had two windows providing access to natural light and fresh air, had been clean and had had a toilet in an acceptable state of repair and cleanliness and which had been duly isolated from the living area. The applicant shared those cells with ten other prisoners, and each of them had had their own bed. He had had the opportunity to take a shower once a week, had been served a meal three times a day, the quality of which had never been contested by him or any other prisoner, and had benefited from an hour’s daily walk, as provided for by law.
7. Thus, the Government considered that at all times the material conditions of the applicant’s detention in Rustavi prison had been in compliance with the relevant international standards. They objected that the applicant’s complaint under Article 3 of the Convention was unsubstantiated and manifestly ill-founded. Alternatively, the Government also suggested that the complaint was inadmissible on the grounds of non‑exhaustion of domestic remedies as the applicant had never contested his conditions of detention before any of the competent domestic authorities.
8. In reply, the applicant maintained, in general terms, that he had been detained in conditions which had not been compatible with his human dignity, in breach of Article 3 of the Convention.
B. The Court’s assessment
9. Referring to its relevant case-law in respect of conditions of detention in Georgian custodial institutions at the material time, the Court reiterates the rule that whenever an applicant wished to challenge allegedly poor material conditions of detention in a Georgian prison, even if such complaints did not call for the full and meticulous exhaustion of any specific criminal or civil remedies (see, for comparison, Aliev v. Georgia, no. 522/04, § 62 and 63, 13 January 2009, and Goginashvili v. Georgia, no. 47729/08, §§ 54 and 57, 4 October 2011), it was still required, at the very minimum, that at least one of the responsible State agencies must have been informed of the applicant’s subjective assessment that the conditions of the detention in question constituted a lack of respect for, or diminished, his or her human dignity. Without such basic conduct at the domestic level by a person who wished to challenge the conditions of his or her detention under the Convention, the Court would necessarily have difficulty in evaluating the credibility of an applicant’s allegations of fact in that connection (see Ramishvili and Kokhreidze v. Georgia (dec.), no. 1704/06, 26 June 2007, and Janiashvili v. Georgia, no. 35887/05, § 70, 27 November 2012).
10. Having regard to the material available in the case file, the Court notes that the applicant never informed any of the relevant authorities of his dissatisfaction with any particular aspect of the material conditions of his detention in Rustavi prison (see paragraph 4 above). Even supposing that, at the relevant time, the applicant had had no effective domestic remedy at his disposal, in the proceedings before the Court, he limited his submissions to vague and general statements only, without providing a detailed individual account of the conditions of his cells. Consequently, the Court finds that the applicant has failed to discharge his burden of proof and to substantiate his complaint properly (compare, amongst many other similar authorities, Muršić v. Croatia [GC], no. 7334/13, § 127, ECHR 2016; Ananyev and Others v. Russia, nos. 42525/07 and 60800/08, § 122, 10 January 2012, and Ildani v. Georgia, no. 65391/09, §§ 26 and 27, 23 April 2013).
11. It follows that the applicant’s complaint under Article 3 of the Convention concerning the material conditions of his detention in Rustavi prison is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 4 October 2018.
Milan BlaškoSíofra O’Leary
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy