EIT: Isän väkivaltainen pidätys 9-vuotiaan lapsen nähden oli 3 artiklan vastaista huonoa kohtelua

In Chamber judgment in the case of A v. Russia (application no. 37735/09) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

• two violations of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment/investigation) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned the applicant’s allegation that she had been traumatised by witnessing her father’s violent arrest by the police when she was nine years old. The Court found that the applicant’s allegations were credible, but that the authorities’ only response had been to carry out a pre-investigation inquiry, which was superficial and ineffective. Moreover, the law-enforcement officers, who had to have been well aware that the applicant was or would be on the scene of the operation, had taken no account of her interests when planning and carrying out their operation against her father, thus exposing her to a scene of violence. That had very severely affected her, as she had suffered in particular from a neurological disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder for several years afterwards.

In the Court’s view, the applicant witnessing such a violent incident had amounted to ill-treatment which the authorities had failed to prevent, in breach of Article 3.

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