Communicated on 31 August 2015
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 72080/12
Tsitsino SHAVADZE
against Georgia
lodged on 1 November 2012
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Tsitsino Shavadze, is a Georgian national, who was born in 1965 and lives in Batumi, the Ajarian Autonomous Republic (“the AAR”), Georgia. She is represented before the Court by Mr R. Papidze, a lawyer practising in Batumi.
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. The applicant is the wife of Mr Roin Shavadze, a military officer of the Georgian armed forces, who was arrested by special State security agents of the Ministry of the Interior on 16 August 2008 for illicit possession of drugs.
4. Following his arrest, Mr Shavadze’s whereabouts were unknown to the applicant for some six hours. She finally learnt that her husband was dead and that she could find his corps in the Batumi city morgue.
5. As it became subsequently known to the applicant through unofficial channels, her husband had allegedly been shot by officers of the State security in a remote part of the AAR. The case file contains video images of Mr Shavadze’s dead body which bear noticeable and numerous traces of physical ill-treatment.
6. A criminal case for Mr Shavadze’s killing was launched by the authorities on an unspecified date.
7. The first time when the applicant, represented by a lawyer, requested to be involved as a party to those criminal proceedings was 15 September 2008. Subsequently, she reiterated that request on several occasions, supplementing it with requests for access to criminal case materials, all of which were routinely dismissed by the prosecution authority. Thus, copies of the latest available in the case file replies from the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the AAR, which were dated 2 and 18 May 2011, explained to the applicant that given that the investigation was still in a preliminary stage and that important investigative measures were to be conducted, it was premature to decide on the applicant’s request for leave to be involved as a victim. On the other hand, since the applicant was not a party to the proceedings, she was not entitled to have access to the criminal case materials.
8. According to the case file as it stands at hand, the investigation into the murder of the applicant’s husband is still pending at its early stage, without her having obtained either victim status or access to the criminal case materials.
COMPLAINTS
9. The applicant complains about the murder of her husband by law-enforcement agents and the absence of effective investigation in that respect.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Has the applicant’s husband’s right to life, ensured by Article 2 of the Convention, been violated in the present case?
Having regard to the procedural protection of the right to life (see paragraph 104 of Salman v. Turkey [GC], no. 21986/93, ECHR 2000-VII), was the investigation in the present case by the domestic authorities in breach of Article 2 of the Convention?
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