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141. The applicants further complained that the refusal to recognise the applicant Church was preventing it from acquiring legal personality, thus depriving it of its right of access to a court, as guaranteed by Article <mask> of the Convention, so that any complaint relating to its rights, and in particular its property rights, could be determined. In addition, they alleged that the refusal to recognise, coupled with the authorities’ stubborn persistence in holding to the view that the applicants could practise their religion within the Metropolitan Church of Moldova, infringed their freedom of association, contrary to Article 11 of the Convention. | 9 |
26. The Government contended that Article 6 did not apply in the present case. Relying on the Court’s reasoning in its decision in the case of Pitkevich (Pitkevich v. Russia, no. 47936/99, 8 February 2001), they maintained that disputes relating to dismissal from the judiciary fall outside the scope of Article <mask> of the Convention. The Government further argued that the applicant was expressly denied access to a court to challenge the President’s decree on her dismissal from office and that this exclusion was justified, based on the State interest in ensuring the independence and impartiality of the judiciary. | 9 |
44. The Government submitted that the applicant’s complaint under Article <mask> of the Convention was inadmissible for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. Firstly, they claimed that the applicant should have complained under Articles 73 and 234 of the CCP to the responsible investigator or prosecutor about the alleged planting of drugs by the police. Secondly, the applicant had failed to apply to the first-instance court, under Article 111 §§ (g) and (d) of the CCP, to reject the report of his personal search and the ensuing evidence as inadmissible. Thirdly, the applicant had failed, when lodging his appeal on points of law, to separately challenge the decision of the Appeal Court of 6 December 2005 to admit the search report as evidence. Lastly, according to the Government, the applicant could have asked, on the basis of Article 364 of the CCP, for an alternative forensic examination to determine his possible state of drug intoxication, which request he had also failed to make. | 9 |
42. The Government maintained that if the offence had been committed after 1 June 2005, that is to say, after the entry into force of the Misdemeanours Act and the recent Code of Criminal Procedure, the fine would have been imposed directly by the relevant official authority, without any court proceedings. They stated that the domestic court had taken the new provisions into account in the applicant’s favour and had sentenced him to an administrative fine, which could not be converted into imprisonment and had not been registered in the criminal records. They argued that the outcome of the proceedings could therefore hardly be considered important for the applicant. They further argued that in the present case the relevant law had been clear and the facts undisputed, leaving little room for judicial discretion. The case file included many witness statements and an official report proving that the applicant’s hotel was being used for prostitution purposes. Moreover, the applicant had been heard by the authorities during the preliminary investigation stage and had been able to submit his written arguments to the court during the course of the proceedings. The Government concluded that the imposition of an administrative fine without the holding of an oral hearing did not contravene Article <mask> of the Convention, in particular taking into account the requirement for efficiency and expediency in the administration of justice. | 9 |
95. The applicants complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that their conviction had been based on evidence obtained as a result of ill-treatment and in the absence of any real evidence of their guilt. They added that they had not been allowed to see a lawyer for 24 hours following their placement in detention in Moldova, and had been de facto prevented from having such meetings in the period of 4-8 November 2000 and thereafter; and that they had not been allowed to meet in private with their lawyers. | 9 |
43. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that, in so far as it concerned the charge involving OZ, he had been convicted of an offence which had been incited by the police and that his conviction was based on evidence from the police officers involved and from OZ, an individual acting on their instructions. Article 6, in so far as relevant, provides: | 9 |
74. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the instant application was an exceptional case in which the applicant had been denied each and all of the basic fair-trial guarantees provided for in Article <mask> of the Convention. The violations of her rights included inter alia a failure to inform the applicant promptly, in a language that she understood, of the nature and cause of the accusation against her, to provide her with adequate time and facilities to find a lawyer of her own choosing and to prepare her defence, to allow the cross-examination of witnesses and to provide the applicant with proper interpretation and a transcript of the trial. | 9 |
82. The applicant also rejected the Government’s argument that the flaws in the appointment procedure of A.E. had not amounted to a flagrant breach of domestic law and thus the Supreme Court’s interpretation of domestic law should not be questioned by the Court. The applicant submitted, firstly, that the Supreme Court’s judgments of 19 December 2017 had confirmed that there had been a flagrant breach of domestic law when A.E. had been appointed as a judge of the Court of Appeal. It had been so flagrant that she would not have been appointed if the Minister of Justice had followed the applicable legal procedure. Secondly, the Supreme Court had concluded that there had been a flagrant breach of domestic law in its previous judgments. Therefore, the court should not have been interpreting domestic law in its judgment against the applicant but rather Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. The Court’s case-law required that judges be appointed according to foreseeable and lawful procedures and not arbitrarily. When it had been demonstrated that A.E.’s appointment had indeed been unlawful and arbitrary and in breach of Article 6 § 1, such an appointment should always be considered a flagrant breach of any domestic law. Alternatively, domestic law that did not provide remedies against unlawful or arbitrary judicial appointments should not qualify as “law” under the autonomous meaning of that term under Article <mask> of the Convention. | 9 |
91. The applicant submitted that the present case reflected both subjective and objective bias on the part of the Chief Justice, contrary to Article <mask> of the Convention. The Chief Justice had been biased on account of the fact that his brother had been the lawyer of the opposing party during the injunction proceedings. His bias was evident from the incident of 12 October 1992, which left both the other judges on the panel speechless, as well as from the final judgment. The latter judgment found against Mrs M. and ordered the removal from the records of a report drawn up by the judicial assistant which had been in favour of Mrs M. and made reference to her legal counsel’s actions vis-à-vis the brother of the Chief Justice (see paragraph 20 above). Indeed, since the personal impartiality of a judge was presumed until there was proof to the contrary, the applicant had had no reason to request the judge’s withdrawal until the above events occurred. However, the Chief Justice should have known that he himself would have brought up the issue related to his brother and should therefore have withdrawn of his own motion. Moreover, the applicant opined that the Chief Justice’s behaviour during the incident and the sibling relationship were not separate issues but reflected two sides of the same coin. | 9 |
103. The Government submitted that the application did not disclose any appearance of a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention, in particular having regard to the time elapsed after the entry into force of the Convention in respect of Croatia. They submitted further that the subject matter of the applicant's cases did not call for particular urgency in deciding them. They referred to the Court's case-law, arguing that the cases that did call for special urgency were those that related to family-law matters or to payment of damages to the victims of road accidents, those that involved the interests of a great number of persons and cases concerning dismissal from work. | 9 |
24. The Government rejected that argument. In their submission, Article <mask> of the Convention did not apply to the procedure followed by the applicant to obtain legal aid. They pointed out, firstly, that the relevant procedure, which was governed by the Legal Aid Act of 10 July 1991, enabled any litigant to apply for legal aid in connection with civil or criminal proceedings. Such applications, which were optional, were made before the court proceedings commenced or while they were under way, without in any way affecting their outcome. | 9 |
71. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that the remaining two sets of proceedings in cases in which he was involved had been excessively long. In so far as this complaint relates to the civil proceedings in which he sought compensation for damage arising out of another part of the 1961 decision (see paragraphs 34 – 37 above), this part of the application must be rejected for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies as he failed to have recourse to the complaint about excessive length of judicial proceedings available under the Polish law. | 9 |
59. The applicant complained that on the first two occasions when he had been questioned by the prosecutor, he had been subjected to ill-treatment and denied the assistance of his own chosen counsel, being allocated against his will a counsel who was already representing one of the co-accused. He further complained that he had not been allowed to question or confront the co-accused who had made incriminatory statements against him during the investigation stage. He relied on Article <mask> of the Convention, the relevant parts of which provide: | 9 |
37. The Government argued that Article <mask> of the Convention was inapplicable to the proceedings against the Central Bank and the ARKO as the proceedings did not concern the applicant’s civil rights or obligations. In the Government’s view, the proceedings merely pertained to the enforcement of the judgment issued in the applicant’s favour. They insisted that the complaint should be dismissed as incompatible ratione materiae. In alternative, the Government argued that the Presidium of the Voronezh Regional Court had quashed the judgments in the applicant’s favour with a view to correcting the judicial error committed by the lower courts. | 9 |
47. The applicant further complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that the judgments given in her civil cases had been erroneous, that the courts had wrongly applied substantive law and that, as a result, her rights had been breached. She further argued that the courts had committed errors in the assessment of evidence and that their reasoning had been illogical and contradictory. | 9 |
78. The Government submitted that the fairness of proceedings held by the Supreme Court in the context of a cassation appeal had been examined by the Court in the case of Walczak v. Poland (dec.), no. 77395/01, 7 May 2002. The Court had declared the case inadmissible, finding that the proceedings complied with the requirements of Article <mask> of the Convention. In the present case no circumstances had obtained which would justify a different conclusion. Moreover, in the present case, after the hearing had been held by the Supreme Court on 23 September 2004, the presiding judge had publicly pronounced its decision dismissing the applicant's cassation appeal and the judge rapporteur orally explained the reasons of that decision, in the presence of the applicant's lawyer. Hence, the applicant had been duly informed of the reasons why his appeal had not been successful. | 9 |
97. The applicant further complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that the Vienna Court of Appeal, in its decision of 24 May 2006, had wrongly assessed the evidence before it and in particular the information conveyed by the photograph published in Profil on 12 July 2004. In particular, he alleged that the court had found that the photograph showed the applicant with his left arm around a seminarian and his right hand on the seminarian’s crotch, and not just accidentally in front of it as maintained by him, without giving sufficient reasons for that finding. | 9 |
44. The Government of Serbia and Montenegro submitted that the complaint under Article <mask> of the Convention was not incompatible ratione loci with the provisions of the Convention. They noted that the acts had been committed either on the territory of Serbia and Montenegro or on the territory of Italy, while the consequences had been suffered solely in Serbia and Montenegro. In their submission, the first point the Court had to take into consideration was that the aircraft which had bombed the RTS building had taken off in Italy, where the decision to carry out the raid had been taken in coordination with NATO headquarters in Brussels. The acts concerned also included all the physical and logistical preparation of the operation, which had resulted in the deaths of sixteen people. At the time, Italy and the other NATO member States had total control over the use of weapons in Serbian and Montenegrin airspace, but ultimately it was Italy which had had the aerial capacity to bomb the RTS building. These factors clearly showed the link between the events in issue and Italy, even though the consequences were suffered only in Serbia. In the Government of Serbia and Montenegro’s submission, the present case was, therefore, sufficiently distinguishable from Banković and Others (cited above) as to warrant a different conclusion and one that would avoid a denial of justice. They concluded from the above that the act complained of in the present case was not exclusively extraterritorial. | 9 |
53. The Government argued that the applicant's case had been examined at two levels of jurisdiction. Neither the Convention nor domestic law guaranteed a right to have a civil case heard at three levels of jurisdiction. The right to a court was not absolute and could therefore be subject to certain limitations, in so far as they did not impair the very essence of that right. In particular, the criteria of admissibility of appeals to be lodged with the highest courts could be strict and the procedure more formal than that before the lower courts, without the requirements of Article <mask> of the Convention being breached thereby. The mere fact that it was necessary for a cassation appeal to be lodged by a qualified representative was not open to criticism. | 9 |
85. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that the criminal proceedings against him had been unfair. He alleged that the domestic courts had violated his right not to incriminate himself and in convicting him had had regard to a confession given under duress. Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, in so far as relevant, reads as follows: | 9 |
47. The Government considered that the applicant had relied on Article 13 in conjunction with Article <mask> of the Convention. In view of the lack of any reason to believe that Article 6 had been breached in the present case, the Government considered that Article 13 could not be relied on, since the applicant had not had an arguable claim under Article 6 of the Convention. | 9 |
62. The applicant also complained that the proceedings related to the determination of his nationality had been unfair. He invoked Article <mask> of the Convention. The applicant also complained about the conditions of his detention in Russia pending extradition, relying on Article 3. However, having regard to all the material in its possession, and in so far as these complaints fall within its competence, the Court finds that they do not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms set out in the Convention or its Protocols. It follows that this part of the application must be rejected as being manifestly ill-founded, pursuant to Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention. | 9 |
87. The applicants submitted that a “reasonable time” within the meaning of Article <mask> of the Convention had been exceeded. They pointed out that the second applicant's tax assessment had been examined by the County Administrative Court on 29 March 2000 and had only recently been finally determined by the courts although he had appealed against the relevant Tax Authority decision already in December 1995. The first applicant's appeals – which had been lodged before the declaration of bankruptcy – had been dismissed by the County Administrative Court on 17 July 2000, that is about three and a half years after that declaration. The applicants disputed the Government's contention that the cases had involved complex issues. | 9 |
40. The applicant further complained under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention that the civil proceedings instituted against him had been unfair because the domestic courts had not considered the testimony of his fiancée to be credible and had allowed the plaintiff's action. He further submitted that the medical fee claimed by the plaintiff was in breach of Article <mask> of the Convention. Moreover, the applicant claimed that he had not had an effective remedy within the meaning of Article 13 of the Convention before the domestic courts because they had wrongly found against him. | 10 |
56. The applicant also complained under Article 6 § 2 of the Convention that in the decisions of the national courts in the civil proceedings he was treated as having committed a criminal offence. He further complained, under Article 5 §§ 3 and 5 of the Convention, that his pre-trial detention had exceeded a reasonable time and that he had no right to compensation. Lastly, he invoked Article <mask> of the Convention but without further elaboration. | 10 |
30. The applicant alleged that the proceedings on 21 February 2001 and the ensuing criminal proceedings before the national courts, taken together, had violated his rights under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) and (d), Article <mask> of the Convention and Article 2 of Protocol No. 7. The Court has examined the applicant's complaint under Article 6 of the Convention, which in the relevant parts reads as follows: | 10 |
106. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
49. The applicant alleged under Article <mask> of the Convention that he had been convicted of an act which had not constituted a criminal offence when it had been committed. He submitted that offshore banking activities had not been regulated under national law at the material time. He therefore concluded that the acts in dispute could not have given rise to an offence of aggravated fraud and that his conviction had been based on the new Criminal Code, which had entered into force in 2005, after the impugned acts. Article 7 of the Convention reads: | 10 |
83. The Government rejected that argument, observing that Article <mask> of the Convention did no more than prohibit any retrospective application of criminal law in relation to “the time the criminal offence was committed”. They observed that the provisions of the Criminal Code which established penalties for the offences of which the applicant was convicted had not been amended after 2 September 1999, the date when they were committed. They noted in particular that the offences concerned were punishable by life imprisonment with daytime isolation and that the penalty imposed by the national courts had not exceeded that limit. | 10 |
147. The Government submitted in the alternative that the applicant's conduct during the attack on Mazie Bati “was criminal according to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations”, within the meaning of the second paragraph of Article <mask> of the Convention. In that connection, the Court notes that on virtually every occasion the Convention institutions have examined a case under the second paragraph of Article 7, they have not considered it necessary also to examine it under the first paragraph (De Becker v. Belgium, no. 214/56, Commission decision of 9 June 1958, Yearbook 2, p. 214; X. v. Norway, no. 931/60, Commission decision of 30 May 1961, Collection of Decisions of the European Commission on Human Rights no. 6, p. 41; X. v. Belgium, no. 1028/61, Commission decision of 18 September 1961, Yearbook no. 4, p. 325; and Naletilić v. Croatia (dec.), no. 51891/99, ECHR 2000‑V, as also the decisions of X. v. Belgium (no. 268/57), Touvier and Papon (no. 2) cited above; for more extensive reasoning, see Penart v. Estonia (dec.), no. 14685/04, 24 January 2006, and the Kolk and Kislyiy decision cited above). The Court sees no reason to deviate from that approach in the present case. Since it has examined the case under the first paragraph of Article 7, it does not consider it necessary also to examine it under the second paragraph. In any event, even supposing that that paragraph was applicable in the instant case, the operation of 27 May 1944 cannot be regarded as “criminal according to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations”. | 10 |
80. The applicant noted in the first place that, according to the case-law of the Italian courts (Court of Cassation, combined divisions, judgment of 6 March 1992 in the Merletti case), Article 442 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which sets out the penalty to be imposed when the summary procedure has been adopted is – despite its inclusion in the CCP – a provision of substantive criminal law. He argued that, unlike the provisions examined by the Grand Chamber in the Kafkaris v. Cyprus case (no. 21906/04, 12 February 2008), that clause did not concern the procedure for execution of sentence but the fixing of the sentence. It should therefore be considered a “criminal law” for the purposes of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
34. The Government observed that the applicant had been sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment for an offence committed in 1995. His sentence had indisputably been provided for in the legislation applicable on that date, namely Article 222-37 of the Criminal Code, concerning drug offences, and Article 132-9 of the same Code, concerning recidivism, of which the 1995 offence constituted the second component. The penalty imposed on him, having been applicable at the time when the offence had been committed, had therefore satisfied the requirements of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
55. The applicants maintained under Article <mask> of the Convention that they had been arrested and the criminal proceedings had been brought against them on account of an act which did not constitute a criminal offence under domestic law. The applicants also complained that the unlawful restrictions placed on their right to freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, the criminal proceedings brought against them and their inability to raise their complaints before the domestic judicial authorities into their allegations constituted a violation of Articles 17 and 18 of the Convention. | 10 |
95. The applicant considered his conviction contrary to the requirements of Article <mask> of the Convention as it did not fall into any of the three exceptions laid down therein. His conduct towards the villagers of Mazie Bati did not constitute an offence under either international or national law at the time, nor was it “criminal according to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations”. | 10 |
124. The Government submitted that there had been no violation of Article <mask> of the Convention as regards the applicants, both of whom had been convicted of large-scale embezzlement, a criminal offence under Article 160 § 4 of the Criminal Code. They maintained that the relevant domestic courts had correctly decided on the legal classification of the offence, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s guidelines of 27 December 2007. They also noted that the applicants’ appeal on points of law had been rejected at a higher level. | 10 |
15. The applicant complained under Article 3 that he had been subjected to psychological torture in police custody. Relying on Article 5 § 3 of the Convention, he further complained that he had been held in police custody for a long time. Under Article 6, the applicant alleged that the State Security Court which had tried and convicted him was not an independent and impartial tribunal. He also complained about the length of the proceedings. Finally, the applicant alleged that his conviction, which was based on his visit to Iran, had been in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
110. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
92. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
21. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that he had been dismissed from his post on the basis of his criminal conviction for having disseminated communist propaganda under the provisions of the former Criminal Code, which had been repealed in 1991, and despite the fact that his criminal record had been erased following the repeal of the Articles in question. The applicant submitted that both the administrative authorities and the courts had failed to take into account the fact that his criminal record had been erased. He further noted that he was a fully qualified teacher and had been able to practise his profession between 1985 and 1999 without any problems. The applicant maintained that he had been prevented from practising his profession and had sustained psychological damage. | 10 |
166. The applicant submitted that the commutation of the death penalty into life imprisonment without parole infringed Article <mask> of the Convention, such commutation having resulted from a legislative amendment made subsequently to his conviction (under Law no. 4771, which came into force on 9 August 2002). Prior to this amendment, persons sentenced to the death penalty whose execution had not been approved by the National Assembly had remained in prison for a maximum term of thirty-six years. | 10 |
39. The applicant pointed out that there had been a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention as the essential elements of the crime in the present case had not been fulfilled. The applicant had been charged with having concealed property which Mr A. had obtained by a criminal act, namely property which Mr A. had failed to declare. In Finland only a failure to declare property was criminalised, not the failure to surrender property to a bankruptcy estate. From the legality point of view, it was difficult to interpret the term “not to declare property” in a way that would lead to “acquiring property”. If Mr A. was no longer under a duty to declare property, to what property illegally acquired did the applicant’s indictment refer? Mr A did not acquire any property as the real estate concerned was already in his possession. The essential elements of the crime with which the applicant was charged were thus not fulfilled. | 10 |
194. The applicant maintained that because of a close association between the enactment of the 2005 Amendment and the criminal case against him, no comparison could be made with the case of Coëme and Others v. Belgium. Furthermore, the Court’s findings in that judgment with regard to the extension of limitation periods were only relevant in respect of Article <mask> of the Convention and not with respect to the assessment of a complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. | 10 |
86. The applicant submitted that Article <mask> of the Convention guaranteed not only the non-retrospectiveness of the criminal law but also the principle – set forth explicitly in Article 15 of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, by Article 49 of the European Union's Charter of Fundamental rights and by Article 9 of the American Convention on Human Rights (see paragraphs 35-37 above) – that, in the event of a difference between the law in force at the time of the commission of an offence and later laws, the law to be applied was the law more favourable to the accused. That meant that Article 7 was breached whenever courts imposed a heavier penalty than the one prescribed by the law in force at any time between the commission of the offence and the delivery of judgment. The applicant referred on that point to the dissenting opinion of Judge Popović annexed to the Achour v. France judgment ([GC], no 67335/01, ECHR 2006-..). | 10 |
41. The applicant complained that the Criminal Code had been applied retroactively in his case, pointing out that he had been convicted of a continuous offence of abusing a person living under the same roof which, according to the courts, encompassed his conduct even before that offence had been introduced into the law. He also alleged that the courts had not duly examined whether his actions prior to that date would have amounted to a criminal offence under the old law. He relied in that regard on Article <mask> of the Convention, which reads as follows: | 10 |
37. The applicant further complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that the conduct leading to her conviction did not constitute a criminal offence under national law as S.K. had voluntarily transferred the money to her account. From that moment on the money had no longer formed a part of his, and subsequently his estate’s, possessions. She had, therefore, not been obliged to report the money in the estate inventory. She further complained that the unlawful conviction even constituted a breach of Article 6 § 2 of the Convention, as the presumption of innocence had not been respected by the courts. | 10 |
37. The applicant submitted, in particular, that, while increasing the sentences applicable to recidivists was justified by the greater danger they posed on account of their persistence despite warnings from the courts, the concept of recidivism was considered above all to be a means of ensuring exemplary conduct on the part of those who had committed an offence of some seriousness, through a form of probation resulting from the risk of receiving an increased penalty in the event of them reoffending. The rules on recidivism were therefore intended to contribute to reforming convicted persons; that aim, which formed one of the main trends in modern crime policies, accordingly had some bearing on the determination of issues concerning the application of successive laws. In a democratic society the requirements of protecting the social order had to be reconciled with the aim of reforming offenders. He observed that Article <mask> of the Convention related to the requirement of legal certainty. | 10 |
92. The Government submitted that the interpretation of the notion of “official document” was consistent throughout both criminal codes and that the courts had rightly applied Article 325 of the new CC. There was therefore no issue of legal certainty under Article <mask> of the Convention. The Government submitted a number of examples of domestic practice in support of their position. | 10 |
107. The Government argued that the applicant had not exhausted domestic remedies in relation to his complaint under Article <mask> of the Convention, as required by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention. He had failed to complain either expressly or in substance about a breach of his right not to have a heavier penalty imposed on him than the one applicable at the time of his offence in his constitutional complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court. In that complaint, he had only raised a breach of his constitutional right to liberty. | 10 |
40. The applicant further pointed out that even if there existed a legal basis in Finnish law for the applicant’s conviction, the quality of that law was not in accordance with Article <mask> of the Convention. In the Finnish system, the dismissal of a charge did not automatically mean that claims for damages arising from the same facts should also be dismissed. In the present case the Supreme Court, when dismissing the charges against Mr A., also dismissed the compensation claims. This meant that the Supreme Court itself regarded Mr A.’s right not to incriminate himself as a ground of justification and not a ground of excuse. This highlighted the poor quality of the law: this law was at the time, and still is today, very much unforeseeable as regards situations like the applicant’s. | 10 |
202. The applicant complained, invoking Article <mask> of the Convention, that he had been convicted in the absence of criminal intent, as one of the constituent elements of the offence of espionage, and that he should instead have been acquitted. Thus, he had not realised that he was dealing with information containing State secrets, since he had received that information from open publications. Questions had not been put to the jury as to whether he transmitted information containing State secrets and whether he collected it from closed or open sources; the jury therefore found that he had transferred non-classified information to foreign intelligence – acts which were not embraced by the corpus delicti of espionage. Furthermore, it had not been established by the jury verdict that he had had criminal intent to damage the national security of the Russian Federation by abetting foreign intelligence services. Hence, the presiding judge should have acquitted him on the basis of such a verdict by the jury. The applicant concluded that the presiding judge had manipulated the questions to the jury, having disregarded the request by the defence to change their formulation, and had changed the constituent elements of the offence of espionage to his detriment. The applicant further disagreed with the application of domestic law in his case. He argued that the Official Secrets Act defining the list of classified information, which had in any event been rather vague, had not been applicable to him since he had never had admission or access to State secrets by virtue of his office; that the list of classified information had also been defined by presidential decree no. 1203 of 30 November 1995, although under Article 29 of the Constitution such a list was to be defined in a federal law; and that the expert assessment of the secrecy of the transmitted information of 18 July 2002 had been carried out on the basis of unpublished Ministry of Defence decrees nos. 055 and 015 of 10 August 1996 and 25 March 2002 respectively, to which he had not had access. The applicant considered that this situation had contributed to his arbitrary conviction by the presiding judge. The applicant further complained that all of the above had also led to a violation of Article 10 of the Convention. Articles 7 and 10 of the Convention provide: | 10 |
105. The Government submitted that any possible interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of peaceful assembly had been prescribed by law. The applicants had been convicted under Article 283 § 1 of the Criminal Code, prescribing punishment for serious breaches of public order. Referring to the Court’s judgment in Galstyan (cited above, § 107) and taking into account the diversity inherent in public-order offences, the Government considered that the domestic legal norm had been formulated with sufficient precision (see also the arguments developed by the Government under Article <mask> of the Convention – paragraphs 188-91 below). | 10 |
238. The Government observed that, in the Sud Fondi S.r.l. and Others judgment (merits, cited above), the Court had found a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention on the ground that confiscation was not a foreseeable consequence of the applicant companies’ conduct (they had been acquitted as the courts had not found them liable for the offence in question) and that the confiscation measure imposed on them had not therefore been provided for by law for the purposes of Article 7 of the Convention. | 10 |
48. The applicants complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that it had not been clear from the Penal Code provision applied that their conduct might be punishable, as the provision had not defined the scope of private life. The convictions of A. and B. had been public information that could not have fallen within the scope of private life. Furthermore, even though a conviction for invasion of private life allegedly required that intent be shown, the Appeal Court had failed to state how this requirement had been fulfilled. | 10 |
87. The Government pointed out that in the judgment of Vasiliauskas (cited above, § 159) the Court did not deny the right of the State to take action against the perpetrators of the repressions committed during the Soviet occupation regime. What led the Court to find a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention in that case was the domestic courts’ reference to the Lithuanian partisans as a separate political group, which had been excluded from the definition of acts of genocide at the relevant time (the 1950s) and the lack of reasoning of the domestic courts that the Lithuanian partisans constituted a significant part of a protected group, namely the Lithuanian national group. The domestic courts were criticised for not explaining what the notion of “representatives” entailed, and for not providing much of a historical or factual account of how the Lithuanian partisans were representative of the Lithuanian nation (see Vasiliauskas, cited above, §§ 159 and 179-86). The judgment of the Court showed that the lack of arguments of the Lithuanian courts in that specific case had been of the utmost importance. | 10 |
60. The applicant complained under Article 5 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention that the length of his pre-trial detention had been excessive and that he had not had any domestic remedy whereby he could challenge the unlawfulness of his pre-trial detention. He also complained under Article 6 § 3 (c) of the Convention that his defence lawyer had not had adequate time to prepare his additional defence submissions. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that he had been convicted for carrying out lawful acts in his capacity as president of the local branch of a political party, and that criminal law had been extensively construed to his detriment by analogy. | 10 |
66. The Government argued that neither during the administrative offence proceedings nor in his constitutional complaint had the applicant complained of a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. In particular, in his constitutional complaint the applicant had alleged violations of his constitutional rights to equality before the law and a fair hearing, which rights corresponded to those guaranteed by Article 6 of the Convention. | 10 |
98. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
36. The applicants complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that it had not been clear from the Penal Code provision applied that their conduct would have been punishable as the provision had not defined the scope of private life. Moreover, the conviction of B. could not have fallen within the scope of private life as a conviction for assault could never be a private issue, especially as B.'s case file had not been declared secret. Furthermore, no intent had been shown. | 10 |
18. The applicant complained under Articles 6 § 1 and 13 of the Convention that he had been denied a fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal as the Supreme Military Administrative Court had been composed of military judges and that it had acted as a first and only instance court, which had also infringed his right to an effective remedy. He further maintained under Article 6 § 1 that he had been denied a public hearing due to the lack of reference to the principal public prosecutor’s name in the court decisions. The applicant contended that his expulsion from the military academy had amounted to a punishment without a law, in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. Lastly, he maintained under Article 14 of the Convention that he had been expelled from the military academy by reason of his father’s affiliations with a certain trade union, which amounted to discrimination. | 10 |
122. The applicants complained that the legal provision on the basis of which they had been convicted of embezzlement had not been applicable to their acts. They claimed that the authorities extended the interpretation of the offence to such broad and ambiguous terms that it did not satisfy the requirements of foreseeability. They relied on Article <mask> of the Convention, which reads as follows: | 10 |
38. The applicant noted that Article 132-9 of the new Criminal Code had doubled the period between the two components of recidivism and that in order to apply these new, harsher, provisions to him, the Court of Cassation had laid down a rule which, albeit simple, was extremely questionable in the light of Article <mask> of the Convention, not least because it placed sole emphasis on the second component. The applicant considered that the first component of recidivism, which had been totally ignored by the Court of Cassation, was nevertheless an essential aspect of the process. He complained, firstly, that the Court of Cassation had applied harsher legal provisions of which he could not have been aware on the date of his initial conviction and, secondly, that the retrospective application of the new Criminal Code had brought back into being the possibility of recidivism even though its first component had quite simply ceased to exist. | 10 |
127. The applicant submitted that the circumstances that had led to the violation of Article <mask> of the Convention had also breached the principles of fair trial. In February 2000 he had opted for the summary procedure, and in doing so had waived a number of procedural safeguards, because he knew, on the basis of the Code of Criminal Procedure in force at the time, that in the event of his conviction he would be punished by thirty years' imprisonment and not a life sentence. However, the CCP had been amended unfavourably, and in exchange for his waiver he had not been granted a reduction of his sentence (the only advantage being that he had avoided daytime isolation). But adoption of the summary procedure implied a “public-law contract” between the defendant and the State; once entered into, that “contract” could not be rescinded or varied unilaterally. | 10 |
19. The applicant complained that the domestic courts examining the charges against him had failed to respond to his argument that it had not been shown that he had acquired the counterfeit bank notes after 26 March 2005, namely at a time when acquiring such notes had been an offence. He relied generally on Article 6 and Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
18. The applicants complain about the legality and proportionality of pecuniary and non-pecuniary penalties. According to Article 187 ter of the TUF, the pecuniary sanctions applicable to the administrative offence of market manipulation could reach five million euros[28], and be increased up to three times or even ten times the proceeds of the offence or the profit therefrom, taking into consideration the personal situation of the guilty party, the scale of the proceeds of the offence or the profit therefrom, or the effects on the market. While the punishment of administrative offences on the basis of the proceeds of the offence or the profit therefrom, without any fixed upper limit for the pecuniary sanction, raises per se an issue under Article <mask> of the Convention in its limb of the principle of nullum poena sine legge stricta, the extremely wide range of the increased pecuniary penalty foreseen by Article 187 ter no. 5 of the TUF is even more problematic[29]. Be that as it may, the concrete sanctions imposed are neither lawful nor proportionate. | 10 |
62. The applicants raised certain additional complaints with reference to Article 6 and Article <mask> of the Convention. However, having regard to all the material in its possession, and in so far as it has jurisdiction to examine the allegations, the Court has not found any appearance of a breach of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Convention or its Protocols regarding that part of their applications. It follows that that part must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention. | 10 |
37. The Government pointed out that the Supreme Court had confirmed in its judgment of 22 October 2009 that attributing the aggravated receiving offence to the applicant did not violate the legality principle laid down in Article <mask> of the Convention. It was clear that, after a person was declared bankrupt, that person could no longer possess any property lawfully. The applicant must have considered it possible that, at the material time, concealing and obliterating the origin of property possessed by a bankrupt person could lead to prosecution and conviction. | 10 |
78. The applicant complained that his conviction under Article 99 of the Lithuanian Criminal Code had been retroactive and therefore amounted to a breach of Article <mask> of the Convention. He also pointed out that the crime of genocide, as described in that provision of the Criminal Code, did not have a basis in the wording of that offence as laid down in public international law. The Lithuanian courts’ interpretation of the concept of genocide in his case had been too broad. | 10 |
48. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that the domestic courts had retrospectively applied and extensively construed the State Secrets Act in his case. He further complained under Article 10 of the Convention of a violation of his freedom of expression. The applicant claimed that he had been subjected to an overly broad and politically motivated criminal persecution as a reprisal for his critical publications. In particular, he had never transferred any information containing State secrets to Mr T.O., a Japanese journalist. Nevertheless, he had been convicted for his alleged intention to transfer his handwritten notes, which had been found to contain State secrets, to Mr T.O., the only basis for such a finding being the fact that he had previously legitimately communicated information to the Japanese journalist on several occasions. The applicant further complained that in so far as his handwritten notes had been found to have contained the actual names of military formations and units and the activities of radio electronic warfare units, this information had been publicly accessible from a number of public sources, including internet sites, and that he had been unable to foresee that this information had constituted State secrets, as this finding had been based on the unpublished – and therefore inaccessible – Decree no. 055 of the Ministry of Defence. The respective Convention provisions, in their relevant parts, provide: | 10 |
137. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that, according to legal opinions produced by him, the first set of proceedings should have been discontinued, as no offence had been committed. The applicant also complained that he had not been able to initiate criminal proceedings against a prosecutor for allegedly withholding information pertaining to his release. He also complained that his private correspondence had been monitored and that his case had received wide media coverage in Poland. | 10 |
37. The Government argued that Article <mask> of the Convention had not been breached. Although the applicant's company lacked any bookkeeping as from 5 May 1993, this state of affairs continued after the entry into force of Article 148-4 of the Criminal Code on 20 July 1993. Moreover, the applicant had the obligation to keep proper accounting records also prior to that date, according to the Government decree of 6 July 1990. | 10 |
76. The applicant complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that he had been the victim of the retrospective application of a criminal statute. He submitted, in particular, that the acts of which he was accused did not, at the time of their commission, constitute an offence under either domestic or international law, while the exception set out in the second paragraph of Article 7 could not apply in his case because the alleged offences manifestly did not come within its scope. Article 7 of the Convention provides: | 10 |
144. The Government submitted that an award of compensation by the Court to a person convicted of acts as murderous as those committed by the applicant – who had been found guilty in judicial proceedings that met all the requirements of a fair trial – would be difficult to understand. They argued that in the Kafkaris judgment (cited above), “having regard to all the circumstances of the case”, the Court had considered that the finding of a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction in respect of any non-pecuniary damage suffered. | 10 |
28. The Government argued that the compulsory hospitalisation and the measures ordered pursuant to Articles 706-135 and 706-136 of the Code of Criminal Procedure did not constitute penalties within the meaning of Article <mask> of the Convention because they did not follow a criminal conviction. The declaration of criminal insanity and the finding by the judicial authority responsible for pre-trial investigation that there was sufficient evidence that the individual had committed the offences as charged did not amount to an assessment of guilt; only the material attribution of the acts to the person charged had thereby been ascertained. In the Government’s submission, this is what distinguished the measures at issue from the system of preventive detention (Sicherungsverwahrung) under German law, as examined by the Court in M. v. Germany [(no. 19359/04, ECHR 2009)]. | 10 |
29. The applicants complained that the law had been applied retroactively to their disadvantage, as they had been found guilty of bribery in accordance with the wording of a criminal provision that had not yet been in force at the time of the facts. They pointed out that the present case had been the first criminal proceedings for corruption in the small Republic of San Marino. They invoked Article <mask> of the Convention, which reads as follows: | 10 |
100. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
25. The Government took the view that the measures imposed on the applicant pursuant to sections 706-135 and 706-136 of the Code of Criminal Procedure did not constitute “penalties” within the meaning of Article <mask> of the Convention and that the application should be declared inadmissible for being incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of the Convention, in accordance with Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention. | 10 |
65. The Government submitted in reply that the institutional therapeutic measure had been ordered following a review of the judgment to the applicant’s detriment. In such circumstances, Article 65 § 2 of the Criminal Code referred to the rules applicable to the reopening of proceedings, namely – prior to the entry into force of the unified Code of Criminal Procedure on 1 January 2011 – the relevant provisions of the cantonal Codes of Criminal Procedure. They inferred from this that paragraph 2, sub-paragraph (1), of the transitional provisions of the 13 December 2002 amendment to the Criminal Code, in conjunction with Article 65 § 2 of the same Code, “thus provided for the retrospective application of a specific ground for reopening proceedings”. The case of a review to the convicted person’s detriment was governed by Article 189 § 1 (e) of the former Code of Criminal Procedure of the Canton of Basle Urban. In accordance with that provision, criminal proceedings that had been concluded by means of an “enforceable” judgment were to be reopened where, among other situations, circumstances or evidence unknown to the trial court appeared likely to result in an acquitted person’s conviction or to give rise to a more severe punishment for a convicted person. The Government further submitted that the substantive law in force at the time had provided for institutional therapeutic measures, in particular under Article 43 § 1, second sub-paragraph, of the former Criminal Code, and noted that that provision allowed the indefinite detention of a convicted person who, “on account of his mental state”, “pose[d] a severe threat to public safety”, on condition that “such a measure [was] necessary to prevent a danger to others”. Accordingly, by deciding to impose an institutional therapeutic measure, the Court of Appeal had not ordered a heavier penalty than the one that would already have been possible and acceptable at the time of the criminal courts’ decisions. In conclusion, there had been no violation of Article <mask> of the Convention, regardless of whether such a measure, like the indefinite detention provided for in Article 65 § 2 of the Criminal Code, constituted a “penalty” within the meaning of Article 7 of the Convention. | 10 |
8. The applicant’s conviction was therefore based upon legal provisions that were not in force in 1953 and, most importantly, could not have been in force at the relevant time, given that Lithuania was under occupation. Such provisions were applied retroactively. It follows that this would constitute a violation of Article <mask> of the Convention unless it can be established that his conviction was based upon international law as it stood at the relevant time. The applicant’s conviction, in our view, must therefore be examined from that perspective. | 10 |
44. The applicants complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that they had been convicted in criminal proceedings of acts that had been lawful at the material time. They argued that the authorities had extended the interpretation of the criminal law applied in their case in such broad and ambiguous terms that it did not satisfy the requirements of foreseeability. Article 7 of the Convention reads as follows: | 10 |
31. The applicant maintained that in his case the courts should have applied the most favourable wording of the relevant provisions of the Criminal Code, which was that which had been in place between 29 December 1999 and 29 March 2000, when the death penalty had already been abolished and life imprisonment had not yet been introduced. Failure to do so, in his opinion, violated Article <mask> of the Convention, which reads as follows: | 10 |
109. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
46. The Government contested the assertion that there had been a breach of Article <mask> of the Convention in the present case. They stated that the acts imputed to the applicants had constituted criminal offences at the material time. They referred to a ruling by the Constitutional Court of 27 May 2008, no. 8-P, which stated that the law providing for criminal liability could not be interpreted broadly when being enforced and would not apply to acts it did not directly prohibit, or by analogy, and could not be applied retroactively. | 10 |
59. The applicants argued, under Article <mask> of the Convention, that Finnish law contained no provision which defined reporting of a public trial as a punishable offence. At the time of the publication of the articles, it had been unforeseeable and surprising to the applicants that penal sanctions could be imposed on them for having published public information that had been freely available to everybody and to which anyone could have had access on the basis of Article 12, paragraph 2, of the Constitution of Finland. The published information remained even today freely available. The interference with the applicants' freedom of expression had thus not been foreseeable or “prescribed by law”. | 10 |
41. The applicant challenged the applicability of the Customs Code provisions to the confiscation procedure and claimed, accordingly, that the confiscation could not be imposed on him outside a two-month statutory limitation provided for in section 38 of the Code on Administrative Offences. The Court, however, in view of its relevant findings under Article <mask> of the Convention (see paragraph 33 above), does not share this view. | 10 |
52. The Government submitted that the applicant’s conviction under Article 325 of the new CC was compatible with the requirements of Article <mask> of the Convention. In particular, falsification of documents was an offence prohibited by Article 213 of the former CC at the time when the applicant committed the crime. As could be seen from its wording, the document conferring an entitlement or absolving from liability was not confined to state or societal enterprises, institutions or organisations, as various documents of legal significance could be falsified by an individual or a representative of a legal entity. Hence, Article 213 clearly defined the crime, and its provisions were in compliance with the standards of foreseeability and accessibility as required by the Convention. Furthermore, the judicial practice on interpretation and application of Article 213 did not exclude individuals having no links with the state or societal institutions from being convicted under that Article. Accordingly, the offence of which the applicant was convicted corresponded to the corpus delicti of Article 213 of the former CC. In substantiation of their claims, the Government submitted two judgments delivered by the domestic courts at the time when the former CC was still in force, by which individuals had been convicted under Article 213. | 10 |
50. The applicant further complained that Article 325 of the new CC under which he was convicted lacked legal certainty as opposed to its predecessor in the former CC, namely Article 213 which contained the words “State and societal organisations”. Therefore, the interpretation and application of Article 325 to his case went beyond what could be reasonably foreseen by him. In this respect, he invoked Article <mask> of the Convention, which reads as follows: | 10 |
133. The applicant complained that the professional regulations of 12 July 2007 did not define with sufficient clarity the obligations imposed on lawyers, subject to disciplinary action, in so far as they used such vague and general terms as “report suspicions” and “due diligence”. He alleged that this was in breach of the principle of legal certainty, in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
36. The applicant submitted that he could not be held responsible under Article 148-4 of the Criminal Code for the period prior to its entry into force on 20 July 1993. The application by the courts of the concept of a continuing offence allowed them to evade the prohibition of retrospective application of criminal law in Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
95. The Government of Cyprus submitted that the applicant had been wrongly tried for acts which did not amount to offences under national or international law, and which in any event failed to meet the standards of foreseeability and accessibility required by the Convention (see G. v. France, 27 September 1995, Series A no. 325-B), in violation of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
126. The applicant submitted that when he had been sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment on 10 March 1989 by the Limassol Assize Court, under the Prison Regulations applicable at the time, “life imprisonment” had been tantamount to imprisonment for a period of twenty years. As a result of the repeal of the Regulations, the amendment of the relevant legislative provisions and the retroactive application of the provisions thus amended, he had been subjected to an unforeseeable prolongation of his term of imprisonment from a definite twenty-year sentence to an indeterminate term for the remainder of his life, with no prospect of remission, and to a change in the conditions of his detention. Thus, a heavier penalty had been imposed than that applicable at the time he had committed the offence of which he had been convicted, in breach of Article <mask> of the Convention. | 10 |
40. The Government said that the applicant had been sentenced to both a custodial sentence and a customs fine, the latter being a hybrid penalty. Imprisonment in default only took effect if the convicted person failed to pay all or part of the fine. Its role was thus purely subsidiary. Moreover, in Jamil, cited above (see “Relevant domestic law and practice”), the Court expressly stated that its decision in that case applied only in the context of Article <mask> of the Convention to the specific problem of the retrospective application of the criminal statute; indeed that had been the only complaint before it. Consequently, the judgment in Jamil could not be construed as implying that imprisonment in default constituted a “penalty” within the meaning of Article 4 of Protocol No. 7, subject to all the rules in the Criminal Code applicable to prison sentences. | 10 |
72. The applicants complained under Article 5 § 5 of the Convention that they had not had a right to compensation in respect of the length of their detention in police custody and pending trial. They further alleged under Articles 6 §§ 1 and 2 that the İzmir State Security Court had not been an independent and impartial tribunal in that it had relied on unlawful evidence, such as the illegal recording of their telephone conversations and statements which had been taken from them under duress, added to the case file by the public prosecutor, and that it had convicted them without awaiting the judgment of the Aydın Criminal Court. They submitted under Article 6 § 3 (b) and (d) of the Convention that their detention in Aydın prison had deprived them of the opportunity to contact their lawyer easily and that the State Security Court had not given them the opportunity to comment on the illegal telephone recordings submitted by the prosecution. The applicants further alleged under Article <mask> of the Convention that their conviction had been unlawful as it had been based on insufficient evidence. | 10 |
81. The applicant raised a number of other complaints under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention: (a) that she had been sanctioned for actions which had not formed part of her duties as a liquidator (in this respect the applicant also relied on Article <mask> of the Convention); (b) that the Supreme Administrative Court had upheld the decision of the Minister of Justice to strike the applicant off the list of persons qualified to act as liquidators on grounds differing from those given by the Minister; and (c) that the Supreme Administrative Court had erred in the interpretation and application of the law governing judicial review of administrative decisions such as the one issued by the Minister of Justice. | 10 |
38. The applicant, once more relying on Article 6 § 1 and 13 of the Convention, also complained that the Hannover Regional Court had not taken a formal decision on her request for a subsequent hearing, as foreseen in section 33(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. She also complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that at the relevant time her acts were not yet punishable as money laundering. | 10 |
20. The applicants complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that it had not been clear from the Penal Code provision applied that their conduct would be punishable as the provision had not defined the scope of private life. Moreover, the convictions of A. and B. had been public information that could not have fallen within the scope of private life. Even though a conviction for invasion of private life allegedly required that intent be shown, the Appeal Court had failed to state how this requirement had been fulfilled. | 10 |
123. The applicant observed that social and political groups were added to the Lithuanian definition of genocide by the Criminal Code amendments of 21 April 1998. In the light of Article <mask> of the Convention, he claimed that criminal liability for genocide in respect of those two groups was thus not applicable at one particular point in time but was applicable at another, although the facts potentially giving rise to an issue were the same. In his specific case, he contended, the Lithuanian State had applied the criminal law retroactively, despite the fact that from 1992 to 1998 the State itself regarded the applicant’s actions as not constituting the crime of genocide. Even acknowledging that the crime of genocide could be prosecuted retroactively, he submitted that it was difficult to accept that criminal liability for such a crime depended on the State’s ability to amend the legislation or to find new characteristics of the crime which were relevant only for Lithuania. The applicant pointed to the fact that Lithuania itself prohibits the retroactive application of criminal law. | 10 |
103. The applicant complained that the failure of the Russian authorities to enforce the judgment of the Rîșcani District Court of Chisinau of 28 October 2009, whereby he had been awarded a residence order in respect of his son, A.P., had violated his right to family life under Article <mask> of the Convention, which, insofar as relevant, reads as follows: | 11 |
50. The applicant complained that the Hungarian authorities had failed to take timely and adequate measures to ensure that he was reunited with his daughter following her abduction. In particular, he argued that they had not made sufficient attempts to locate K.S. and the child. He relied on Article <mask> of the Convention, which, in so far as relevant, reads as follows: | 11 |
103. The applicants complained, relying on Article <mask> of the Convention, that their eviction from the land where they had been settled for a long time constituted a violation of their right to respect for their private and family life and their home. They further relied on Article 3 of the Convention, taken alone and in combination with Article 14 of the Convention, and on Article 18 of the Convention taken together with Article 8. The Court will examine this complaint under Article 8, which reads as follows: | 11 |
82. The applicants complained under Article <mask> of the Convention that their right to family life had been violated by the Swedish authorities and courts by taking the children into public care, and keeping them there, as well as by refusing to allow the parents to have any contact with their children for prolonged periods of time, contrary to the best interest of the children, and to the detriment of the family unity. Article 8 reads insofar as relevant: | 11 |
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