Armenia to pay €50,000 under European Court’s judgment
The case of Zalyan and Others v. Armenia (application nos. 36894/04 and 3521/07) concerned the complaint by three former servicemen that they had been subjected to torture while performing their military service, being suspected of having murdered two other servicemen.
One of theapplicants also complained that he had been unlawfully deprived of his liberty.
In today’s Chamber judgment1 in the case, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously,
that there had been:
no violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights as regards the applicants’ alleged torture;
a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on account of the lack of an effective investigation into their complaints of having been subjected to torture;
and a violation of Article 5 §§ 1, 2 and 3 (right to liberty and security) in respect of one of the applicants, Mr Zalyan.
The Court considered that there was insufficient evidence to corroborate the applicants’ allegations
of having been tortured, largely as a result of the authorities’ failure to comply with the applicable procedural rules, under which the applicants would have had to be placed in a detention facilitywhere they would have undergone a compulsory medical examination. At the same time, the Court found that the applicants had raised an arguable claim of having been subjected to ill-treatment.Contrary to their obligation to carry out an effective investigation, the prosecution authorities had failed to make any serious attempts to investigate those allegations.
As regards Mr Zalyan’s detention, the Court considered, in particular, that prior to 24 April 2004, he had been deprived of his liberty for the purposes of the criminal investigation while the alleged disciplinary penalty imposed on him had been only a formal pretext. As for the period from 24 August to 4 November 2004, there had been no court decision authorising his detention.
FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT, UNANIMOUSLY,
1. Decide[d] to join to the merits the Government’s claims of the alleged non exhaustion of domestic remedies and of the inapplicability of Article 5 of the Convention to the first applicant’s deprivation of liberty prior to his formal arrest on 24 April 2004, and rejects them;
2. Declare[d] the first applicant’s complaint about the alleged lack of requisite medical assistance in detention inadmissible and the remainder of the applications admissible;
3. H[e]ld that there has been no substantive violation of Article 3 of the Convention;
4. H[e]ld that there has been a procedural violation of Article 3 of the Convention in respect of all three applicants;
5. H[e]ld that there has been a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention in respect of the first applicant, in that his deprivation of liberty from 21 to 24 April 2004 and from 24 August to 4 November 2004 was unlawful;
6. H[e]ld that there has been a violation of Article 5 §§ 2 and 3 of the Convention in respect of the first applicant;
7. H[e]ld that there is no need to examine the first applicant’s complaint under Article 5 § 4 of the Convention;
8. H[e]ld (a) that the respondent State is to pay, within three months from the date on which the judgment becomes final in accordance with Article 44 § 2 of the Convention, EUR 20,000 (twenty thousand euros) to the first applicant and EUR 15,000 (fifteen thousand euros) to the second and third applicants each, plus any tax that may be chargeable, in respect of non-pecuniary damage, to be converted into the currency of the respondent State at the rate applicable at the date of settlement;
(b) that from the expiry of the above-mentioned three months until settlement simple interest shall be payable on the above amounts at a rate equal to the marginal lending rate of the European Central Bank during the default period plus three percentage points;
9. Dismisse[d] the remainder of the applicants’ claim for just satisfaction.