THIRD SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 59944/17
Aleksandra Andreyevna RYLEYEVA
against Russia
The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 19 October 2021 as a Committee composed of:
Peeter Roosma, President,
Dmitry Dedov,
Andreas Zünd, judges,
and Olga Chernishova, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 6 August 2017,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Ms Aleksandra Andreyevna Ryleyeva, is a Russian national, who was born in 1991 and lives in Moscow. She was represented before the Court by Ms I. Khrunova, a lawyer practising in Kazan.
2. The Russian Government (“the Government”) were represented by Mr. M. Galperin, the Representative of the Russian Federation to the European Court of Human Rights, and lately by Mr M. Vinogradov, his successor in that office.
The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. On 12 December 2015 the applicant was arrested on suspicion of having committed fraud. On the same day the Nagatinskiy District Court of Moscow ordered to place her under house arrest. The arrest was subsequently extended by the District Court on 4 February, 3 March, 3 June, 5 September, 3 and 30 November, and 8 December 2016.
5. On an unspecified date the applicant appealed against the court order of 4 February 2016 and on 24 February 2016 the Moscow City Court upheld the said court order on appeal.
6. The applicant did not appeal against the court orders of 3 March, 3 June, 5 September, 3 November and 8 December 2016.
7. On an unspecified date the applicant received a copy of the City Court’s letter dated 23 December 2016 asking the District Court “to decide on the admissibility of the applicant’s statement of appeal”. According to the applicant, the letter was issued by the City Court in connection with her appeal against the court order of 30 November 2016.
8. On 27 February 2017 the District Court found the applicant guilty as charged. On 28 June 2017 the City Court upheld her conviction on appeal.
COMPLAINTS
9. The applicant complained under Article 5 § 3 of the Convention about the excessive length of her house arrest.
THE LAW
10. The applicant complained that her house arrest had been unjustified and excessively long. She relied on Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, which reads as follows:
“Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1 (c) of this Article shall be ... entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial. Release may be conditioned by guarantees to appear for trial.”
11. The Government argued that the applicant’s complaint should be rejected as inadmissible. They submitted that after 4 February 2016 the applicant had not appealed against any of the extensions of her house arrest, including that of 30 November 2016. In so far as the applicant may be understood to suggest that the appellate court’s decision of 24 February 2016 should be considered final within the meaning of the Convention, the applicant had failed to comply with the six months’ rule when having introduced the application on 6 August 2017.
12. The applicant contested the Government’s argument. She claimed that she had appealed the house-arrest order of 30 November 2016. However, her appeal had not been examined by the City Court. In support of her allegations, the applicant submitted a letter from the City Court of 23 December 2016 see (paragraph 7 above). In her opinion, by having filed the appeal against the court order of 30 November 2016 she had complied with the rules of six months and exhaustion of domestic remedies.
13. The Court reiterates its established case-law pertaining to the requirements of exhaustion of domestic remedies and the six-month period, which are closely intertwined.
14. In respect of the requirements of exhaustion of domestic remedies, States are dispensed from answering before an international body for their acts before they have had an opportunity to put matters right through their own legal system, and those who wish to invoke the supervisory jurisdiction of the Court as concerns complaints against a State are thus obliged to use first the remedies provided by the national legal system. The obligation to exhaust domestic remedies therefore requires an applicant to make normal use of remedies which are available and sufficient in respect of his or her Convention grievances. Article 35 § 1 also requires that the complaints intended to be made subsequently in Strasbourg should have been made to the appropriate domestic body, at least in substance and in compliance with the formal requirements and time-limits laid down in domestic law and, further, that any procedural means that might prevent a breach of the Convention should have been used. Where an applicant has failed to comply with these requirements, his or her application should in principle be declared inadmissible for failure to exhaust domestic remedies (see Vučković and Others v. Serbia (preliminary objection) [GC], nos. 17153/11 and 29 others, §§ 70-72, 25 March 2014).
15. The Court further reiterates that, as it has established in a number of earlier cases, once the length of pre-trial detention is found to have exceeded a reasonable length requirement set out in Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, the detention after that date is to be also found, as a rule, to have necessarily kept such character throughout the time for which it was continued (see Stögmüller v. Austria, 10 November 1969, § 12, Series A no. 9; and Lamazhyk v. Russia, no. 20571/04, § 80, 30 July 2009).
16. Turning to the circumstances of the present case, the Court observes that the applicant indisputably appealed against the court order authorising extension of her house arrest on 4 February 2016. However, the final decision in that respect being 24 February 2016, the Court is unable to examine whether, as of 4 February 2016, the applicant’s detention exceeded the reasonableness requirement given that she introduced her complaint only on 6 August 2017.
17. As to the applicant’s allegation that she lodged an appeal against the court order of 30 November 2016, the Court is unable to accept that the City Court’s letter of 23 December 2016, regard being had to its content, supports such allegation. There is nothing in the said letter’s wording to link it to the court order of 30 November 2016, or to any other specific court ruling. Accordingly, it finds it established that the applicant did not appeal against any of the court orders extending her house arrest after 4 February 2016 and that she did not therefore give an opportunity to the national judicial authorities to consider whether such extensions were compatible with the Convention.
18. Lastly, the Court notes that neither the applicant, nor her representative presented to this Court any coherent and substantiated by evidence explanation of their failure to appeal against the house-arrest orders (see, mutatis mutandis, Rogushin v. Russia (dec.), no. 34706/04, § 34, 21 June 2016).
19. Regard being had to the above, the Court accepts the Government’s objection and finds that this complaint must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 18 November 2021.
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Olga Chernishova Peeter Roosma
Deputy Registrar President