Communicated on 13 June 2016
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 39423/15
Vita VORIENĖ
against Lithuania
lodged on 30 September 2015
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Ms Vita Vorienė, is a Lithuanian national who was born in 1961 and lives in Biržai.
A. The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
On the morning of 15 April 2008 the applicant’s son, M.P., was found dead in his cell in a police station in Biržai. The body bore the marks of strangulation and a blanket was looped tightly around his neck. M.P. was found with his feet on the ground and leaning forward while the other end of the blanket was attached to the metal bar at the side of the top bunk of his bunk bed.
The same day a pre-trial investigation was opened. By 1 October 2013, the investigation had been discontinued and reopened six times. Each time prosecutors would conclude that M.P. had committed suicide and that no crime had been committed, but the court would allow the applicant’s complaint that the investigation had not been effective, reopen the criminal investigation and order investigators to perform further actions to establish the truth. In particular, by a ruling of 5 February 2009 the Panevėžys Regional Court found a number of flaws in the examination of the scene of the death and of video recordings of the cells. The court also noted that the testimony of police officers had been contradictory, even false. Moreover, an internal investigation had established gross breaches of duty by police officers in operating the detention centre, which could attract criminal liability under Article 229 of the Criminal Code. Later in the criminal proceedings doubts arose as to what had caused M.P.’s strangulation because the blanket had disappeared. The burnt matches he had allegedly used to write a suicide note were also not found in M.P.’s cell.
The criminal proceedings were terminated by a ruling of the Panevėžys Regional Court of 27 April 2015 to approve a decision by the prosecutor of 19 December 2014 to discontinue the pre-trial investigation. The court noted that many pieces of evidence had been collected and examined. It also emphasised that two of the applicant’s main criticisms had been answered. Firstly, an examination by an expert performed after October 2013 had disproved the applicant’s allegation that the video recordings of the police station cells had been tampered with. According to that expert, none of the recordings showed any signs of such tampering. Secondly, all the reports by medical experts had shown that the injuries on M.P.’s body could have been inflicted by M.P. himself. The applicant’s allegation that M.P.’s death could have been caused by someone else had been examined throughout the criminal investigation but no proof of that had been found.
B. Relevant domestic law
For the relevant domestic law and practice see Česnulevičius v. Lithuania, (no. 13462/06, §§ 47-50, 10 January 2012) and Banel v. Lithuania (no. 14326/11, § 36, 18 June 2013).
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Articles 2, 3 and 6 § 1 of the Convention that the Lithuanian authorities failed to protect her son’s right to life, and that the people who were guilty of causing his death remained unpunished. She also argues that the investigation into the circumstances of her son’s death was deficient and excessively long.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the applicant’s son’s right to life, ensured by Article 2 of the Convention, been violated in the present case (see Paul and Audrey Edwards v. the United Kingdom, no. 46477/99, §§ 54-56, ECHR 2002‑II)?
2. Having regard to the procedural protection of the right to life (see Salman v. Turkey [GC], no. 21986/93, §§ 104-105, ECHR 2000‑VII; Ramsahai and Others v. the Netherlands [GC], no. 52391/99, §§ 321 and 324-325, ECHR 2007‑II, and Giuliani and Gaggio v. Italy [GC], no. 23458/02, §§ 298-306, ECHR 2011 (extracts)), was the investigation by the domestic authorities in the present case in breach of Article 2 of the Convention?
The Government are requested to provide the Court with a copy of the internal investigation report of 30 May 2008, no. 50-1-IS-42, as well as any information about follow-ups to that investigation.
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