Communicated on 21 February 2017
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 9013/12
Bakur KIGHURADZE
against Georgia
lodged on 1 February 2012
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Bakur Kighuradze, is a Georgian national who was born in 1955 and currently resides in Tbilisi. He is represented before the Court by Mr I. Baratashvili, a lawyer practising in Tbilisi.
The circumstances of the case
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. The applicant was arrested on suspicion of espionage on 13 July 2010.
4. The criminal case was classified as secret by the authorities on the grounds that the case file contained information on State secrets.
5. By a judgment of 7 March 2011 the Tbilisi City Court found the applicant guilty as charged after a trial held in camera.
6. The applicant appealed and the appeal hearing was also held in camera. On 1 July 2011 the Tbilisi Court of Appeal upheld the applicant’s conviction of 7 May 2011 in full.
7. On 18 October 2011 the Supreme Court of Georgia dismissed an appeal by the applicant on points of law as inadmissible.
8. On 21 November 2011 counsel for the applicant applied to the Tbilisi City Court for permission to have access to the case file for making notes and photocopying material for lodging an application with the Court. Having demanded that the lawyers sign a non-disclosure declaration, the court granted them access to the file but rejected their request to photocopy anything as they did not have the legally required special permission to carry out activities related to State secrets.
9. On 30 November 2011 the lawyers asked the Tbilisi City Court about the possibility of incurring criminal liability if they disclosed facts and evidence from a classified criminal case to the Court. They also submitted a request to copy at least those parts of the case file that did not contain information on State secrets, but to no avail. Lastly, the lawyers reminded the Tbilisi City Court of the State’s obligation enshrined in Article 34 of the Convention. The Tbilisi City Court stated in response that it had granted them access to the case file and so no complaint of a violation of Article 34 could be made. As regards the question on possible criminal liability for disclosing facts and evidence from the case to the Court, the court answered that it had not been authorised to interpret the law in general unless it concerned a criminal case that it had under consideration.
10. On 23 December 2011 the applicant’s lawyers posed the same question to the Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia but received no response.
COMPLAINTS
11. The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that the court hearings in the case against him, which had been classified as secret, were not heard in public but, on the contrary, were held in camera without any reasonable grounds and that the judgments were not pronounced publicly. He further complains under Article 34 of the Convention about the Tbilisi City Court’s refusal to provide him with a copy of his case file for the purposes of lodging an application with the Court.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Did the applicant exhaust domestic remedies concerning the exclusion of the public from the hearings?
2. In the affirmative, did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of the criminal charges against him in accordance with Article 6 § 1 of the Convention? In particular:
2.1. Was excluding the public in the present case “strictly necessary”, within the meaning of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
2.2. Was the judgment in the present case pronounced publicly, as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention?
3. Has there been any hindrance by the State in the present case with the effective exercise of the applicant’s right of application, ensured by Article 34 of the Convention?
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