Article 10 Archives

Journalist versus journalist! Conviction for compensation for posting articles with offensive comments. The style of the texts has the same protection as their content! Violation of freedom of expression

Article 10
12/02/2021 19:31

JUDGMENT Gheorghe–Florin Popescu v. Romania 12.01.2021 ( app. no. 79671/13) see here SUMMARY The case concerned the domestic authorities’ decision to order the applicant, a journalist, to pay damages for having published five blog posts criticising L.B., another journalist who was the editor-inchief of a newspaper in the Desteptarea media group and producer for a […]

The pre-trial detention of the singer and columnist Atilla Taş, on account of tweets and articles written by him, was unlawful and arbitrary

Article 10
10/02/2021 19:45

JUDGMENT Atilla Taş v. Turkey 19.01.2021 (app. no. 72/17) see here SUMMARY The case concerned the pre-trial detention of the singer and columnist Atilla Taş because of tweets he posted on his Twitter account and articles and columns he wrote in the daily newspaper Meydan, between 2011 and 2016, criticising government policies. Mr Taş was […]

Prohibition for a detained lawyer to visit websites on legal matters as well as that of the ECHR! Violation of the freedom to receive information and ideas

Article 10
09/02/2021 15:23

JUDGMENT Ramazan Demir v. Turkey 09.02.2021 (app. no. 68550/17) see here SUMMARY The case concerned the prison authorities’ refusal to grant a request for access to certain Internet sites, lodged by Mr Demir in the course of his pre-trial detention in Silivri Prison in 2016. Mr Demir, a lawyer, wished to access the Internet sites […]

Removing illegal recordings of a cosmetics businessman from a website did not violate the freedom of expression

Article 10
09/02/2021 13:16

JUDGMENT Société Editrice de Mediapart and others . France 14.01.2021 (app. no. 281/15 and no. 34445/15) see here SUMMARY The two cases concerned an order issued against Mediapart, a news website, its publishing editor and a journalist to remove from the news company’s website audio extracts and transcripts of illegal recordings made at the home […]

Erdogan portrayed as Bush’s dog in a collage at a public exhibition. Arrest, pre-trial detention and conviction of the artist! Violation of freedom of expression

Article 10
05/02/2021 08:56

JUDGMENT Dickinson v. Turkey 02.02.2021 (app. no. 25200/11) see here SUMMARY Collage exhibition in public places against Erdogan. Freedom of expression, political criticism and proportionality of intervention. The applicant, a British national who has been a professor at Istanbul University for more than 20 years, exhibited in a public event and in a courtroom a […]

Lack of impartiality of the court when in a trial for revealing state secrets 1/3 of the jurors were related to secret services!

Article 10
11/12/2020 18:20

JUDGMENT
Danilov v. Russia 01.12.2020 (app. no. 88/05)
Jurors, principle of impartiality and the right to examine witnesses.
A famous physicist was found guilty of treason for revealing state secrets. The applicant complained of jury bias and that his restrictions on the examination of witnesses meant that he did not have access to a fair trial.
The ECtHR found that bias issues were identified in the composition of the jury as 4 of the 12 jurors carried “state security clearance”. The national court should therefore have considered this issue in detail. The failure of the courts to do so violated the ECHR.

Disciplinary sanction of non-promotion of a judge for harsh articles against the President of the Supreme Court. Accusations without proof. No violation of the right to freedom of expression

Article 10
08/12/2020 19:05

JUDGMENT
Panioglu v. Romania 08.12.2020 (app. no. 33794/14)
Judges and freedom of expression. Official sanctions against a judge, in particular concerning promotion, due to an article she had written in the press.
The applicant wrote an article in the press entitled “Nothing about how a Comrade Prosecutor has become president of all the judges”. In it she harshly criticized the activities of the President of the Court of Cassation during the period of the oppressive communist regime, whenever she worked as a Prosecutor. She wondered how the “Comrade Prosecutor” had acted to “uproot the enemies of the socialist class” and to “chase” women who had had an abortion. . She spoke of the “dungeons” and “poverty” under the regime and the prosecutors “somewhere above in an untouchable shining world … All these
comrades, usurpers of Christ and His Law, sternly guard[ing] the communist prison”. She spoke about living in grinding poverty while “the Comrade Prosecutor ha[d] also floated above”.

Strasbourg for the first time against the coronavirus! Inadmissible application for omissions and inadequate handling of the health crisis due to Covid-19, without the plaintiff being a victim!

Article 10
03/12/2020 16:12

JUDGMENT
Le Mailloux v. France 03.12.2020 (app. no. 18108/20)
The case concerned the applicant’s objections to the handling by the French State of the Covid-19
health crisis.
The Court observed that the applicant was complaining about the measures taken by the French State to curb the propagation of the Covid-19 virus among the whole population of France, but had not shown how he was personally affected. It reiterated that it did not recognise an actio popularis:
meaning that applicants cannot complain about a provision of domestic law, a domestic practice or
public acts simply because they appear to contravene the European Convention on Human Rights. In
order for applicants to be able to claim to be a victim, they must produce reasonable and convincing
evidence of the likelihood that a violation affecting them personally will occur.
The application was thus incompatible with the European Convention.

Freedom of expression is violated by the unlawful detention of a journalist during the performance of his duties. Detention is not compatible with the ECHR when there is no reasonable suspicion of guilt

Article 10
26/11/2020 14:57

JUDGMENT
Şık v. Turkey 24.11.2020 (app. no. 36493/17)
The case concerned the initial and continued pre-trial detention of the journalist Ahmet Şık, who
was suspected of disseminating propaganda in favour of organisations considered to be terrorist
organisations or of assisting them through articles and interviews published in the Turkish daily
newspaper Cumhuriyet and social media posts, all of which criticised government policy.
The Court held that Mr Şık could not be reasonably suspected, at the time of his placement in
detention, of having committed the offences of disseminating propaganda in favour of terrorist
organisations or assisting those organisations. In other words, the facts of the case did not support
the conclusion that a reasonable suspicion had existed against him. Accordingly, although imposed
under judicial supervision, the orders for Mr Şık’s initial and continued detention had been based on
mere suspicion.

The surreptitiously taken photos of the applicant who was the Party Chairman partner at her exit from the hospital violated the respect for private life

Article 10
23/11/2020 07:27

JUDGMENT
Dupate v. Latvia 19.11.2020 (app. no. 18068/11)
Photographes taken secretly of mother and newborn child as they leave the maternity clinic and their publication in the media. The applicant was the partner of the President of a political party, who was a public figure. Right to the protection of the privacy of the mother. Balancing privacy and freedom of expression.

Article 10