Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 146
November 2011
Plathey v. France - 48337/09
Judgment 10.11.2011 [Section V]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Prisoner held in foul smelling cell in disciplinary wing, 23 hours a day for 28 days: violation
Facts – The applicant, a prisoner, appeared before the disciplinary board following a search of his cell. He was ordered to spend forty-five days in a disciplinary cell, that is, until 22 February 2009, having regard to the four days he had spent in detention. The applicant was placed in a cell that had recently been set on fire and now had a nauseous smell. He unsuccessfully appealed against the disciplinary board’s decision.
Law – Article 3: The applicant had been detained for twenty-eight days, twenty-three hours per day, in the disciplinary block in a cell which had been burnt out a week earlier. He had been detained there on account of an alleged lack of cell space despite the fact that a senator who had visited the cell on 26 January 2009, twenty-five days after the fire and seventeen days after the applicant had been put in it, had noted a “suffocatingly strong smell” and the prison governor had said in a letter of 17 February 2009 that no prisoners could be put in it. There had been eight doctor’s visits during the period in which the applicant had been in the cell without any request being made for a change of cell. Although the applicant had not asked the prison authorities to put him in another cell on grounds of the poor quality of the air in the one he was in, he had referred to the problem in his appeals against his detention in a disciplinary cell. Moreover, the administrative authorities had been well aware of the situation. The applicant had undeniably been very badly affected by the fact that his cell had been burnt out shortly before he was put in it and a strong burning smell had lingered several weeks after the fire. Accordingly, the applicant’s conditions of detention had diminished his human dignity and amounted to degrading treatment.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 13 in conjunction with Article 3: The applicant was unable to have his conditions of detention reviewed by a judge before the end of the disciplinary measure because the administrative court had given a ruling on 10 February 2009 only on the lawfulness of the decision to place him in the cell. The possibility available to prisoners held in a disciplinary cell to lodge an urgent application on grounds of a breach of a fundamental freedom (recours en référé-liberté) had been introduced into the Code of Criminal Procedure by the Prison Act of November 2009, well after the applicant had served his disciplinary sentence.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41: EUR 9,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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