THIRD SECTION
Application no. 53918/11
Tatiana VELESCO
against the Republic of Moldova
lodged on 15 August 2011
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicant, Mr Tatiana Velesco, is a Moldovan national, who was born in 1956 and lives in Chișinău. She is represented before the Court by Mr V. Kovali, a lawyer practising in Chişinău.
The circumstances of the case
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. On 20 January 2009 the applicant’s son (V.) was found hanging on a rope in the garden of his parents’ summer house. On 2 March 2009 a criminal investigation was started. The investigator noted that V. had been the subject of a criminal investigation for large-scale fraud at a private company, that according to his relatives he had been persecuted by persons acting on that company’s behalf in order to compel him to pay the double of the damage caused, and that this may have provoked V.’s suicide.
4. The initial examination by a specialised doctor took place on 21 January 2009. On 25 May 2009 the prosecutor ordered an autopsy of V.’s body by the Centre for Legal Medicine (“the Centre”). On 29 May 2009 the Prosecutor General’s Office replied to the applicant’s complaint about the slow pace of the investigation that it had given instructions to take all actions required for a full investigation.
5. In reply to the applicant’s complaint of 25 September 2009 the Centre informed her on 15 October 2009 that the autopsy had not been carried out because the expert charged with it had fallen ill. The autopsy was finished on 20 October 2009.
6. On 27 November 2009 the prosecutor ordered the Centre to carry out another autopsy and formulated additional questions to be answered. That autopsy started on 14 December 2009 and was finished on 23 April 2010.
7. The two autopsies revealed the absence of any injuries on V.’s body except for that left by the rope. The doctors found that the medical evidence pointed to suffocation through strangling, without any signs of fighting or of death prior to being suspended on the rope, and the absence of any traces of alcohol or drugs in V.’s blood.
8. On 11 December 2009 the applicant paid for an additional medical (histopathology) investigation, which was started on 14 December 2009, but it is unclear whether and when it was finished.
9. Based on the medical evidence, as well as the interviews with various persons who had known V., on 30 July 2010 the prosecutor decided to discontinue the investigation because V. had committed suicide. The prosecutor found no evidence that V. had been persecuted by anybody, but established that he had had financial difficulties, which may have caused him to commit suicide.
10. The applicant disagreed with the prosecutor’s decision and challenged it in court. On 17 December 2010 the investigating judge of the Buiucani District Court accepted her complaint and ordered a
re-examination of the case by the prosecutor. He found that the applicant had asked for another medical investigation (a histopathology report) and had paid for it, but that it had not been carried out. Moreover, she was interviewed as a witness, but not given all the rights as the victim’s representative, and could thus not fully exercise her procedural rights such as studying the materials in the case. Finally, the judge found that the prosecution had failed to identify the persons who had last seen the victim and to verify whether the suicide version had been given priority over others, since the autopsy expert had started his analysis with the statement that V. had been found hanged.
11. The outcome of the investigation is unknown at the moment.
COMPLAINTS
12. The applicant complains under Article 2 of the Convention about the insufficient investigation of her son’s death, which she considers not to have been a suicide.
13. She also complains that the incertitude concerning the circumstances of her son’s death prevent her from fully carrying out religious ceremonies for honouring her late son, in breach of Article 9 of the Convention.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Did the investigation in respect of the applicant’s son’s death comply with the requirements under Article 2 of the Convention? In particular, were the applicant’s procedural rights observed and was the manner of carrying out that investigation, including any delays allowed, capable of undermining the authorities’ ability to establish the cause of the victim’s death and, as appropriate, to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators (see Iorga v. Moldova, no. 12219/05, 23 March 2010)?
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