THIRD SECTION
Application no. 4853/12
Petru POPOVICI (GÎLCĂ)
against the Republic of Moldova
lodged on 13 January 2012
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Petru Popovici (Gîlcă), is a Moldovan national, who was born in 1962 and is currently detained in Prison no. 13 in Chișinău. He is represented before the Court by Mr R. Zadoinov, a lawyer practising in Chișinău.
A. The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
By a final judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice of 21 January 2010 the applicant was convicted for several offences and sentenced to thirteen years of imprisonment. In view of the years which he had already spent in prison, the sentence was to be purged on 12 November 2014.
On 12 March 2010 the Prosecutor General lodged a request for annulment (recurs în anulare) against the final judgment of 21 January 2010. He argued that the judgment in question was unlawful because there had been many procedural mistakes during the proceedings. He did not indicate any such mistakes but submitted his own version of the events and reargued the merits of the case.
On 7 November 2011 the Plenary Supreme Court of Justice examined the Prosecutor General’s request for annulment in the applicant’s absence and upheld it. The court quashed the judgment of 21 January 2010 and ordered a fresh rehearing before the Supreme Court. After that rehearing the proceedings were reopened and are pending to date.
In the meantime, the applicant is detained in Prison no. 13 where the conditions are very poor. In particular, his cell is overcrowded, dirty, cold and infested with vermin.
B. Relevant domestic law
The following are relevant extracts from the Code of Criminal Procedure:
Section 452 Request for annulment
“The General Prosecutor, his or her deputies or the parties mentioned in section 401 para. 1 (2) and (3) ... may lodge a request for annulment with the Supreme Court of Justice in respect of any judgment which has become final after all the ordinary means of appeal have been exhausted.”
Section 453 Grounds for a request for annulment of a judgment
“Final judgments in criminal cases shall be subject to requests for annulment (...) in the following instances:
a. when an international court found that there has been a breach of human rights and fundamental freedoms, which could be remedied by a re-hearing;
b. when the Constitutional Court found a provision of the law relied upon in the case to be unconstitutional.
c. when the convicted person has been extradited[...]”
COMPLAINTS
1. The applicant complains under Article 3 of the Convention about the poor conditions of detention in Prison no. 13.
2. He complains under Article 6 about the abusive quashing of the final judgment of 21 January 2010 contrary to the principle of legal certainty and that the proceedings that led to the quashing were conducted in his absence.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the applicant been subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention in so far as his complaint about the conditions of his detention in Prison no. 13 is concerned?
2. Has there been a breach of Article 6 of the Convention on account of the quashing of the final judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice of 21 January 2010 as a result of the request for annulment procedure?
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