Preventive detention for the protection of public order during the royal wedding in the UK was legitimate and did not violate the ECHR!
JUDGMENT
Eiseman-Renyard v. United Kingdom 28.03.2019 (no. 57884/17, 57918/17, 58019/17, 58326/17, 58333/17, 58343/17, 58377/17 and 58462/17)
PROVISION
Article 5
SUMMARY
Preventive detention for the protection of public order at the royal wedding. Complain the applicants about their arrest and detention for several hours on 29 April 2011 in various parts of central London in order to avoid public order disruption during the marriage of the Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge. Appeals before the national courts were eventually rejected by the Supreme Court in 2017. Agreeing with the UK courts’ review and analyses of the applicants’ cases, the European Court found that the courts had struck a fair balance between the applicants’ right to liberty and preventing them from disturbing the public order and causing danger to the public. It moreover pointed out that their analyses had proved to be well-founded, and had informed a 2018 Grand Chamber judgment of the European Court, S., V. and A. v. Denmark (no. 35553/12). In that judgment the Grand Chamber had found it necessary to clarify and adapt the case-law, agreeing with the conclusion of the UK Supreme Court that preventive detention could be compatible with Article 5 in certain circumstances.
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicants, Hannah Eiseman-Renyard, Brian Hicks, Edward Maltby, Patrick McCabe, Deborah
Scordo-Mackie, Hannah Thompson, Daniel Randall and Daniel Rawnsley, are variously British, Irish
and British/Spanish nationals. They were born in 1986, 1967, 1987, 1987, 1992, 1989, 1987, and
1988 respectively and live in London.
On 29 April 2011 large numbers of foreign royalty and other heads of state were in London,
thousands of citizens were expected and the threat level from international terrorism was assessed
as ‘severe’. The police had received intelligence that activities were planned to disrupt the
celebrations.
The applicants were taken to different police stations and released without charge once the royal
wedding was over. Their periods of custody ranged from about two and half to five and a half hours.
Brian Hicks, active in republican politics, had wanted to attend a “Not the Royal Wedding” street
party in Red Lion Square.
Hannah Eiseman-Renyard and Deborah Scordo-Mackie had intended to take part in a “zombie
picnic”. According to information received by the police, those dressed as zombies would attempt to
throw maggots as confetti at the royal wedding procession.
The other applicants had planned to participate in a republican protest in Trafalgar Square.
Most of the applicants had no previous convictions or cautions.
The applicants sought judicial review of their detention which was heard over three instances
terminating in 2017 in the Supreme Court.
The applicants argued before the Supreme Court that preventive detention was not compatible with
the European Convention, as found by the European Court of Human Rights in a Chamber judgment
of 2013 (Ostendorf v. Germany, no. 15598/08).
The Supreme Court considered that the Strasbourg case-law on preventive detention was not clear.
It agreed with the concurring opinion of two of the judges in Ostendorf that the majority had
interpreted Article 5 (right to liberty and security) of the Convention too strictly in that case and
preventive detention could be compatible with Article 5 in certain circumstances.
It concluded that there had been nothing arbitrary about the decisions to arrest and detain the
applicants and dismissed their appeals.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT
The Court noted that the UK courts had undertaken a comprehensive review of the background facts
of the applicants’ cases. Like the Court, they held that the arrests had been necessary to prevent the
likelihood of an imminent breach of the peace, taking into account the crowd size, international
interest and “severe” threat level on the day of the royal wedding.
Furthermore, the applicants had been released as soon as the imminent risk had passed and in all
cases their detention had only been for a matter of hours.
The Court therefore considered that there were no convincing reasons for it to depart from the
domestic courts’ decisions in the applicants’ cases.
Moreover, the UK courts had reviewed this Court’s jurisprudence in their decisions, and their
analyses had proved to be well-founded. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s analysis of the Strasbourg
case-law in the applicants’ cases had informed a 2018 judgment of the European Court, S., V. and A.
v. Denmark (no. 35553/12), where the Grand Chamber found it necessary to clarify and adapt the
case-law and confirmed that preventive detention could be compatible with Article 5 in certain
circumstances.
The UK courts had therefore struck a fair balance between the applicants’ right to liberty and
preventing them from disturbing the public order and causing danger to the public.
The Court concluded that the applications were inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded(echrcaselaw.com editing).
