EIT: Ennaltaehkäisevä vapaudenriisto uusintarikollisuuden ehkäisemiseksi oli EIS:n mukaista, vaikka henkilö oli suorittanut hänelle tuomitun rangaistuksen

3.2.2017 | Oikeusuutiset

Markku Fredman

Euroopan ihmisoikeustuomioistuin on tuoreessa ratkaisussaan katsonut, että Saksan viranomaiset olivat voineet määrätä valittajan pysymään edelleen vapautensa menettäneenä huolimatta siitä, että hän oli jo suorittanut hänelle tuomitun rangaistuksen. Valittajaa koskevaa riskiä vakavaan uusintarikollisuuteen voitiin psykiatristen avioiden mukaan pitää todennäköisenä, minkä vuoksi EIS:sta ei ollut loukattu.

EIT:n lehdistötiedotteesta:

The case of Ilnseher v. Germany (application nos. 10211/12 and 27505/14) concerned the lawfulness of a convicted murderer’s preventive detention. Mr Ilnseher, the applicant, has been in preventive detention since 2008, when he finished serving a ten-year sentence for having murdered, as a juvenile, a woman in 1997 while she was out jogging. The crime was sexually motivated. His detention was retrospectively extended by subsequent court orders, based upon psychiatric assessments which revealed a high risk that he could commit similar serious crimes of a sexual and violent nature if released.

In [a] Chamber judgment in the case the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

no violation of Article 5 § 1 (right to liberty and security) or Article 7 (no punishment without law) of the European Convention on Human Rights on account of Mr Ilnseher’s retrospective preventive detention from the moment when he was placed in a centre for psychiatric treatment, namely 20 June 2013 onwards,
no violation of Article 5 § 4 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on account of the duration of the proceedings for review of Mr Ilnseher’s provisional preventive detention, and no violation of Article 6 (right to fair trial) on account of the alleged lack of impartiality of one of the judges who had ordered his retrospective preventive detention.

The Court found in particular that the German courts had been justified in finding that Mr Ilnseher’s mental disorder was such as to warrant his detention as a person of unsound mind. It further found that, because his preventive detention had been ordered because of and with a view to addressing his mental condition, the retrospective preventive detention order in question could not be considered a “penalty” and so could not fall foul of the principle of ‘no punishment without law.’

Furthermore, the Court decided, unanimously, to strike out of its list of cases the part of the application concerning Mr Ilnseher’s preventive detention from 6 May 2011 (namely, the date when the preventive detention order in question was issued) until 20 June 2013, in view of the Government’s declaration recognising that Mr Ilnseher had not been detained in a suitable institution for the detention of mental health patients during that period and awarding him compensation.