Ramirez Sanchez v. France [GC]

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 88

July-August 2006

Ramirez Sanchez v. France [GC] - 59450/00

Judgment 4.7.2006 [GC]

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Prolonged detention in solitary confinement: no violation

Article 13

Effective remedy

Absence of a remedy in domestic law permitting a detainee to contest his placement in solitary confinement: violation

Facts: The applicant, who had been implicated in a number of terrorist attacks, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1997 for the murder of three people, two of them police officers. In mid-August 1994 he was placed in solitary confinement in prison, under an order which was extended at three-monthly intervals until mid-October 2002. He was therefore kept in solitary confinement for eight years and two months. Whilst in solitary confinement, he was placed in a one-person cell and was prohibited from any contact with the other prisoners and the prison warders, and from any activity outside his cell other than a two-hour daily walk each day and an hour in the cardiac‑training room. The applicant could read newspapers and watch television in his cell, which was lit with natural light. He received very frequent visits from lawyers. The reasons generally given for his detention in solitary confinement were the need to prohibit all contact with the other prisoners and to maintain order and security in the prison, given that he was under investigation in several terrorism cases. The applicant remained in satisfactory mental and physical health. No appeal lay against the decisions placing him in solitary confinement and prolonging his confinement.

Law: Article 3 – The physical conditions in which the applicant had been detained were proper and complied with the European Prison Rules that had been adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 16 January 2006. These conditions had also been considered as “globally acceptable” by the CPT (European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment) in its visit in May 2000. The applicant had received twice-weekly visits from a doctor, a once-monthly visit from a priest and very frequent visits from one or more of his 58 lawyers, including his representative in the proceedings before the Court who was now his wife under Islamic law. He had received more than 640 visits from her over a period of four years and ten months and more than 860 visits in seven years and eight months from his other lawyers. There had been no restrictions on family visits. The applicant had therefore not been in complete sensory isolation or total social isolation, but in partial and relative isolation. The fact remained that it had lasted for over eight years. There were no signs that the applicant’s physical or mental health had been adversely affected: he himself had made no such allegation, and had refused the psychological help offered to him. In the present case, the authorities appeared to have sought to find a solution adapted to the applicant’s character and the danger he represented. Their concerns that the applicant might use communications either inside the prison or on the outside to re-establish contact with members of his terrorist cell, to seek to proselytise other prisoners or to prepare an escape had also been reasonable.

Conclusion: no violation (twelve votes to five).

Article 13 – There was no remedy available in domestic law that would have allowed the applicant to contest the decisions prolonging his detention in solitary confinement over the eight-year period.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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