FOURTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 2101/09
Vakhtang INASARIDZE and others
against Georgia
The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 27 May 2014 as a Committee composed of:
Päivi Hirvelä, President,
Nona Tsotsoria,
Faris Vehabović, judges,
and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 7 November 2008,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. A list of the applicants is set out in the appendix. They are all Georgian nationals and were represented before the Court by Ms L. Mukhashavria.
A. The circumstances of the case
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
3. In the autumn of 2007, large-scale demonstrations led by a collection of opposition parties took place in Tbilisi, protesting against the President of Georgia and the Government. These demonstrations were initially peaceful but turned violent on 7 November 2007 when the police, using various harsh anti-riot tactics, dislodged the demonstrators from land adjoining the House of Parliament, preventing them from resuming their protests.
4. The three applicants were among those hundreds of demonstrators who fell victim to the dispersal of the demonstration by the riot police on 7 November 2007. Notably, the applicants were shot in their feet from riot guns, with the projectiles badly fracturing their shanks in various parts. They were hospitalised on the same day and underwent surgeries for removal of parts of the fractured bones. With respect to the third applicant, in the light of the gravity of the injury, there initially was of a risk of amputation of his damaged leg, which however was extinguished after a successful surgery.
5. Subsequently, on various dates in December 2007, the applicants underwent medical-forensic examinations of their injuries, the results of which, whilst confirming the gravity of the healing fractures, could not establish as to what exactly kind of projectiles fired from riot guns could have caused the relevant injuries.
6. As could be inferred from the case file, the applicants, having learnt that the authorities had opened of their own motion on 10 November 2007 a probe into the proportionality of the police actions during the events of 7 November 2007 (criminal case no. 06078035), requested, on an unspecified date, to be granted victim status.
7. By a letter of 15 February 2008, served on the applicants’ lawyers on the same day, the Tbilisi City Public Prosecutor’s Office rejected the applicants’ request, stating that, since the investigation in criminal case no. 06078035 had not established the existence of any criminal offence, the applicants could not qualify as victims.
8. On 21 April 2008 the applicants, complaining about the prosecution authority’s reply of 15 February 2008, reiterated their claim for victim status. The prosecution authority replied on 24 April 2008 that the applicants’ identical claim had already been examined and rejected by the “prosecutorial resolution” of 15 February 2008.
B. Relevant domestic law
9. According to Article 68 § 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (“the CCP”), as it stood at the material time, a prosecutor or investigator had to decide on a third party’s claim for victim status by issuing a resolution.
10. Neither Article 68 of the CCP, which provision described the procedure for granting victim status in criminal proceedings, nor Article 242, which provision exhaustively described the situations where a prosecutor’s or investigator’s resolution could be appealed to a court, nor any other provision of the CCP envisaged for a possibility of appealing against the prosecutor’s refusal to grant victim status.
COMPLAINTS
11. Citing Articles 2, 3, 10, 13 and 14 of the Convention, the applicants complained that they had become victims of the indiscriminate shooting from police riot guns on 7 November 2007, which had caused significant bodily injury to them, and that the prosecution authority had refused, on 15 February 2008, to grant them victim status, which procedural decision rendered fully ineffective the investigation into the relevant life-threatening incidents.
THE LAW
12. The Court notes that in the part of the application form reserved for statements relating to admissibility issues under Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, the applicants argued that they should be excused for not having attempted to appeal against the prosecution authority’s refusal of 15 February 2008 to grant them victim status, given that that refusal had not been issued in the form of an appealable resolution. The refusal was communicated to them on 15 February 2008 in the form of a letter, against which there was not obviously any procedural possibility of filing an appeal.
13. However, the Court, rather than addressing the question of whether or not the refusal was issued in a procedurally appropriate written form, observes that, according to the Code of Criminal Procedure as it stood at the material time, no appeal could lay against an investigator’s or prosecutor’s decision concerning a third party’s claim for victim status (see paragraphs 9 and 10 above). In other words, by rejecting the applicant’s claim for victim status on 15 February 2008, which, as the applicants noted themselves, extinguished any prospect of having a meaningful investigation into their allegations of ill-treatment by the riot police, the prosecutorial authority made on that date the final domestic decision within the meaning of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.
14. However, as the present application was lodged on 7 November 2008, that is eight months and twenty-three days after the delivery of the final domestic decision of 15 February 2008, it is clearly belated and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Fatoş AracıPäivi Hirvelä
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Appendix
Mr Vakhtang INASARIDZE was born on 2 December 1962 and died pending the proceedings before the Court on 26 July 2013. Mr Nikoloz DIDISHVILI was born on 23 November 1988 and lives in Tbilisi. Mr Giorgi TEVDORASHVILI was born on 2 January 1989 and lives in Tbilisi.
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