FOURTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 57004/14
Asen Todorov SABEV
against Bulgaria
The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 12 May 2015 as a Chamber composed of:
Guido Raimondi, President,
Päivi Hirvelä,
George Nicolaou,
Nona Tsotsoria,
Krzysztof Wojtyczek,
Faris Vehabović,
Yonko Grozev, judges,
and Fatoş Aracı, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 8 September 2014,
Having regard to the decision to grant priority to the above application under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court.
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Asen Todorov Sabev, is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1977 and is currently serving a life sentence in Sofia Prison. He was represented before the Court by Ms P. Todorova from Pernik.
A. The circumstances of the case
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. In 2001 the applicant was sentenced to whole life imprisonment for robbery and murder. His sentence became final on 17 December 2003, when it was upheld by the Supreme Court of Cassation. The applicant has been serving his sentence in Sofia Prison.
4. On 3 September 2014 the Vice-President of Bulgaria, exercising the constitutional prerogative to grant clemency, commuted the applicant’s whole life sentence to a “simple” life sentence.
B. Relevant domestic law
5. The law relating to whole life sentences, acts of clemency and adjustment of a sentence, and their applicability to that type of sentence has been set out in detail in Harakchiev and Tolumov v. Bulgaria (nos. 15018/11 and 61199/12, §§ 51-107, ECHR 2014 (extracts)).
COMPLAINTS
6. The applicant complained that his whole life sentence had amounted, from the time of its imposition, to inhuman and degrading punishment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention. He also complained under Article 13 of the Convention that he had not had an effective domestic remedy in that respect.
THE LAW
7. Articles 3 and 13 of the Convention provide as follows:
Article 3
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
Article 13
“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [the] Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
8. The first question which the Court has to decide in the present case is whether the application was lodged within the six-month time-limit laid down in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.
9. In its judgments in Sabri Güneş v. Turkey ([GC], no. 27396/06, § 40, 29 June 2012) and Mocanu and Others v. Romania ([GC], nos. 10865/09, 45886/07 and 32431/08, § 258, ECHR 2014 (extracts)), the Grand Chamber reiterated that the six-month rule marks out the temporal limit of the supervision exercised by the Court and signals, both to individuals and State authorities, the period beyond which such supervision is no longer possible. It also noted that, in cases in which the alleged breach of the Convention consists in a continuing situation, the six-month time-limit starts to run only when that situation comes to an end (see Sabri Güneş, § 54, and Mocanu and Others, § 261, both cited above).
10. In the present case, the continuing situation alleged to amount to a breach of Articles 3 and 13 of the Convention consisted in the lack of a mechanism under Bulgarian law permitting a realistic possibility for review of the whole life sentence imposed on the applicant. In this connection, in Harakchiev and Tolumov (cited above, §§ 248-62) the Court, while finding that there had been no such mechanism before 2012, noted several developments in 2012-13 which had led to the establishment of such a mechanism.
11. First, in January 2012 a special Clemency Commission had been set up to advise the Vice-President on the exercise of the power of clemency. That Commission had adopted clear and transparent procedures and was regularly publishing the criteria guiding its examination of clemency requests, as well as summaries of the reasons for its recommendations to the Vice-President in individual cases, and statistical information. In addition, the Commission’s rules of procedure provided that it had to take into account the case-law of international courts and other bodies on the interpretation and application of international human rights instruments in force in respect of Bulgaria (ibid., § 259).
12. Secondly, in April 2012 the Constitutional Court had given a binding interpretative decision in which it had clearly defined the scope and manner of exercise of the presidential power of clemency, thus providing weighty guarantees that that power would be exercised in a consistent and broadly predictable way (ibid., § 258).
13. Lastly, in December 2012 the Clemency Commission had proposed to the Vice-President to replace a prisoner’s whole life sentence with a life sentence, based on the reformation of that prisoner, and on 21 January 2013 the Vice-President had acceded to that proposal (ibid., § 260).
14. Based on the above developments, the Court was satisfied in Harakchiev and Tolumov, cited above, that from that time on persons serving whole life sentences in Bulgaria could be regarded as knowing that there existed a mechanism which allowed them to be considered for release or commutation of their sentence (ibid., § 261).
15. The Court therefore finds that the continuing situation that lay at the origin of the present application came to an end at the latest on 21 January 2013, when the Vice-President for the first time commuted in an act of clemency a whole life sentence to the lesser sentence of life imprisonment. After 21 January 2013 it cannot be said that no mechanism for review of whole life sentences existed in Bulgaria. Consequently, the six‑month time‑limit within which the applicant had to complain of that situation before the Court started to run on 21 January 2013 and expired on 21 July 2013. The application was lodged long after that, on 8 September 2014.
16. It follows that it has been introduced out of time and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.
17. The Court notes that the applicant in the present case successfully availed himself of the recent mechanism for review of whole life sentences and on 3 September 2014 obtained the commutation of his whole life sentence to a “simple” life sentence (see paragraph 4 above). In view of its conclusion in respect of the six-month time-limit, the Court does not find it necessary to examine whether the commutation of the applicant’s sentence operated to deprive him of his status as a victim of a Convention violation.
For this reason, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 4 June 2015.
Fatoş AracıGuido Raimondi
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy