FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 28513/10
Gennadiy Dmitriyevich SKLYAR
against Ukraine
lodged on 12 April 2010
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Gennadiy Dmitriyevich Sklyar, is a Ukrainian national, who was born in 1964 and is currently detained.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On 1 September 2007 the applicant was apprehended by the police on suspicion of a carjacking. The same evening the applicant was beaten by the police officers who were forcing him to confess, but to no avail.
On 2 September 2007 the applicant signed the confession, however, as the police officers promised to release him if he signed, but they did not keep their promise.
On 5 September 2007 the applicant was taken to the Novomoskovskiy Local Court of Dnipropetrovs’k Region (the Novomoskovskiy Court), which ordered his pre-trial detention on the ground that the applicant was accused of a crime punishable by imprisonment of more than three years.
The applicant appealed claiming that he was innocent and therefore there were no grounds for his arrest.
On 21 September 2007 the Dnipropetrovs’k Regional Court of Appeal upheld the decision of 5 September 2007. It noted that the issue of the applicant’s guilt or innocence was not at issue and that the first-instance court rightly chose the preventive measure given the gravity of the crime of which the applicant was accused.
On 19 October 2007 the criminal case against the applicant was referred to the Novomoskovskiy Court for examination. Since then it was returned to the investigator for further investigation and resubmitted to the court for examination on several occasions.
Upon the instructions of the Novomoskovskiy Court the Novomoskovskiy Prosecutor’s Office looked into the applicant’s allegations of ill-treatment by the police on the first day of his detention and on 18 June 2010 refused to institute criminal proceedings into these allegations of the applicant on the ground that there was no proof that the applicant had been ill-treated, in particular that there was no medical evidence in support of his allegations.
By the latest known decision of 28 December 2011, the Novomoskovskiy Court referred the case to the Novomoskovskiy Prosecutor’s Office for further investigation on the ground that the applicant had not been represented by a licensed advocate during the investigation. The proceedings are pending and the applicant remains in detention.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains that he was ill-treated and forced to confess and that his complaints about ill-treatment were not examined properly. He also complains under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 and Article 13 of the Convention about the unfairness of the criminal proceedings against him. Under Article 7 he complains that he was charged under the old Code which was no longer in force. In his later submissions he complains about refusals of the authorities to replace his detention with a more lenient measure of restraint and about the length of his detention. He further refers to Article 5 § 2 of the Convention without any further specification. He finally complains under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that because of his detention, his property was left unattended and his two cars were stolen, and that the authorities did not investigate the theft.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Was the length of the applicant’s pre-trial detention in breach of the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention? In particular, did the authorities, in extending his pre-trial detention, advance sufficient reasons for doing so?
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