Information Note on the Court’s case-law 211
October 2017
Lebois v. Bulgaria - 67482/14
Judgment 19.10.2017 [Section V]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for correspondence
Respect for family life
Respect for private life
Undue restrictions on foreign national’s rights to visits and to use a telephone during pre-trial detention: violation
Facts – The applicant, a French national, was arrested in Bulgaria on suspicion of breaking into vehicles. In the Convention proceedings, he complained, inter alia, that for twelve days after his arrest he was unable to contact his family or anyone else to inform them of his deprivation of liberty, and that during his time in pre-trial detention he was not provided with sufficient possibilities to receive visits or to speak on the telephone to his family and friends.
Law – Article 8
(a) Initial twelve-day period – The applicant’s complaint relating to the initial twelve-day period after his arrest was lodged more than six months after that period came to an end and so was out of time. The Court commented, however, that the fact that the applicant had not been able to inform anyone of his deprivation of liberty for twelve days did raise a potentially serious issue under Article 8. In that connection, it noted that (i) the applicant had been kept in handcuffs throughout his (roughly twenty-four-hour) stay in police custody and had not been allowed to use the telephone; (ii) the applicant did not speak Bulgarian and no proper interpretation facilities appeared to have been available; (iii) the applicant had no money on him when he was arrested with which to buy a phonecard and (iv) it had only been with the help of a co-detainee that he had been able to contact the French consulate, which had in turn informed his parents of his arrest and detention.
Conclusion: inadmissible (out of time).
(b) Subsequent period – The restrictions on the visits which the applicant could receive while in pre-trial detention could be seen as an interference with his “private life”. Further, since under Bulgarian law the applicant had the right to make telephone calls while in pre-trial detention and since inmates in the detention facility had access to a card phone, the limitations on his possibility to use that card phone had likewise to be seen as an interference with his “private life” and “correspondence”.
The internal orders setting out the practical details of how inmates in the pre-trial detention facility in which the applicant was kept could exercise their statutory rights to receive visits and use the telephone were not published or made accessible to the detainees in a standardised form. The Government had not established that the applicant was made adequately aware of them, especially given that he did not speak Bulgarian. The restrictions on his visits and use of the card phone appeared to have flowed precisely from the internal arrangements in the pre-trial detention facility, which were governed by those orders. The interference with the applicant’s rights under Article 8 was therefore not based on adequately accessible rules and not “in accordance with the law”.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 1,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; claim in respect of pecuniary damage dismissed.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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