Confiscation of driver’s license indefinitely due to criminal prosecution! Violation of the right to privacy
JUDGMENT
POGREBNYY and others v. Ukraine 19.10.2023 ( app. no. 42419/04)
SUMMARY
Confiscation of the applicant’s passport and driver’s license during the period of the criminal trial against him and also after the issuance of an irrevocable decision.
The Court held that it was not clear whether the applicant had a passport but the existence and seizure of his driver’s license which is a document required for daily use was proved. His deprivation therefore represented a sustained interference with private life. The Court noted that the retention of the applicant’s personal documents after the conclusion of the criminal proceedings against him had no legal basis nor did it pursue a legitimate aim.
The ECtHR ruled that the interference was not justified for the purposes of Article 8 § 2 and found a violation of privacy (Article 8 para. 1) and awarded the applicant 1,200 euros for moral damage.
PROVISION
Article 8
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The first applicant, Mr Borys Oleksandrovych Pogrebnyy, is a Ukrainian national born in 1955 and lives in Vasylkiv, Kyiv region. The second, third and fourth applicants are non-governmental organizations called: Rodyna, Myloserdya and the Union of Large Families of Kyiv, all of which were established under national law and are managed by the first applicant.
The case concerned various aspects of the criminal proceedings against the first applicant, including the seizure of personal information (passport, driving licence, etc.) in his and the other applicants’ possession. They appealed for a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.
In particular the first applicant alleged that the police had seized and failed to return his personal and financial documents relating to the second applicant’s activities.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT…
The Court noted that the Government had submitted evidence which suggested that the first applicant did not have a passport for travel abroad but was in possession of his medical license until 2007. The Court considered that it was primarily the role of national courts to determine the facts facts of the case. These ruled in separate decisions issued on 21 March 2006, 17 April 2007 and 24 October 2011 that the police had seized the applicant’s documents and had not returned them. Moreover, the parties did not dispute that the appellate court’s decision of 17 April 2007, although subsequently annulled, had ordered the police to return the first applicant’s personal documents.
The Court pointed out that the confiscation of documents that are often needed in everyday life to prove one’s identity, such as a passport, constitutes an interference with private life. Regardless of the alleged confiscation of the first applicant’s passport to enable him to travel abroad, since it is not entirely clear whether it was issued to him, the Court noted that the driver’s license confiscated from him was also a document required for daily use. Therefore, his deprivation represented a permanent intrusion into his private life. The Court also noted that the Government had not suggested that the retention of the applicant’s personal documents after the conclusion of the criminal proceedings against him had a legal basis or pursued a legitimate purpose.
The ECHR ruled that the intervention was not justified for the purposes of Article 8 § 2 and found a violation of the applicant’s right to privacy (Article 8 of the ECHR).
Just satisfaction (Article 41): The Court ruled that Ukraine should pay the applicant 1,200 euros for non-pecuniary damage and 100 euros for costs and expenses. (edited by echrcaselaw.com).
