Disciplinary punishment of isolation of a detainee for 14 days. Isolation did not amount to further deprivation of his liberty. No violation
JUDGMENT
Stoyan Krastev v. Bulgaria 06.10.2020 (app. no. 1009/12)
SUMMARY
A disciplinary sentence for a detainee for being held in solitary confinement for 14 days due to a fight with a detainee during a generalized conflict in prisons. The applicant was serving a 3-year prison sentence.
Strasbourg pointed out that in order to determine whether there is a “deprivation of liberty” within the meaning of Article 5, a number of factors must be considered, such as the duration and nature of the measure. In any case violations have been found in long-term isolation.
The ECtHR held that the applicant was already in detention and therefore deprived of his liberty, the solitary confinement lasted only 14 days and did not amount to further deprivation of liberty. The Court did not find a significant difference between the applicant’s remaining liberties at the time of serving his sentence under the “general prison regime” and his detention in solitary confinement.
Strasbourg found no violation of the right to liberty under Article 5-5 of the ECHR.
PROVISION
Article 5§5
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicant, Stoyan Trayanov Krastev, is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1966 and lives in
Pernik (Bulgaria).
The case concerned his complaint that he had not been able to obtain compensation for his unlawful
detention in an isolation cell.
In August 2009, while serving a three-year prison sentence, Mr Krastev was involved in a brawl with
another prisoner, amid a general rise in tensions in the prison. To avoid further unrest and ensure
the general security of detainees, the prison authorities had ordered his transfer to another prison
and placement in an isolation cell for 14 days.
He challenged the disciplinary order against him in court, which found in his favour because of
breaches of the relevant legal provisions.
However, his subsequent claims to obtain compensation were dismissed by the administrative
courts, ultimately in a final decision of June 2011. They essentially found that there was no evidence
to prove the applicant’s claims of profound disturbance and distress.
Relying on Article 5 § 5 (right to liberty and security/enforceable right to compensation) of the
European Convention on Human Rights, Mr Krastev alleged that he had not been able to obtain
compensation for his unlawful isolation, submitting that it had amounted to a further deprivation of
liberty in addition to his sentence of imprisonment
THE DECISION OF THE COURT…
The Court has repeatedly held that, in order to determine whether someone has been “deprived of his liberty” within the meaning of Article 5, the starting-point must be the person’s concrete situation, and account must be taken of a whole range of criteria such as the type, duration, effects and manner of implementation of the measure in question. The difference between deprivation of and restriction upon liberty is one of degree or intensity and not of nature or substance.
It is undisputed that in the present case the applicant was lawfully detained in prison pursuant to a sentence of imprisonment passed down by a court. It is likewise undisputed that, after 25 February 2009, he was not allowed to work outside the prison and was serving his sentence under the “general prison regime” with all the constraints that this entailed.
The principal issue is whether the order by the head of the Chief Directorate for the Execution of Sentences to place the applicant in a punishment cell in itself disclosed a separate deprivation of his liberty within the prison, as distinct from the deprivation of liberty he had to endure in parallel under his prison sentence. The question of the compliance of that order with domestic law is not decisive for this examination, to the extent that it would only be of relevance once an answer is given to the preliminary question mentioned immediately above, namely whether the confinement in the punishment cell represented a separate deprivation of liberty.
In the present case, and more specifically as regards the type of detention at stake, the Court observes that the impugned order of 12 August 2009 did not purport to modify the legal grounds for the applicant’s deprivation of liberty. Instead, it was a disciplinary measure imposed on him within the confines of the prison to which he was transferred to continue serving his lawfully imposed three-year sentence. The order was made following the rise in tensions and a physical altercation in the prison, in which the applicant had been involved, and one of the order’s aims was to ensure the safety of all detainees .
As regards the duration of that detention, namely fourteen days, the Court reiterates that this element is not decisive on its own.
Concerning the effects which that detention had on the applicant, the Court observes that the profound disturbance and distress which he claimed he had suffered as a result were not accepted as established by the administrative courts which heard his related claims. In this connection the Court finds relevant that the applicant had at the time been serving his prison sentence under the “general prison regime” and had been continually confined for a number of months to prison after being forbidden to work outside or otherwise to leave the prison
Finally, and of greatest weight to the Court’s conclusion, the manner in which the applicant’s isolation was implemented has to be scrutinised. The Court observes that the conditions in the disciplinary cell in which he was kept in isolation for fourteen days were clearly harsher when compared with those applicable under the “general prison regime”. In fact, the conditions to which the applicant was subjected while in that cell were comparable to the conditions of detention applied under the “special prison regime” to life and whole-life prisoners in Bulgaria, which have been the subject of examination by the Court under Article 3 of the Convention. He was kept in the high-security prison wing with increased restrictions on his movement, an obligation to take his meals in his cell and a ban on watching television or listening to the radio during those fourteen days. Despite this, taking all the relevant circumstances into account, the Court is not convinced that those differences disclosed anything more than a variation in the regime and conditions in which the applicant was kept while in prison.
The Court is accordingly not satisfied that there was a major difference between the residual liberties available to the applicant during the time he spent serving his sentence under the “general prison regime” in prison and his subsequent detention in isolation, likewise in prison. Customarily, situations of confinement under conditions of isolation similar to those in the present case have been systematically examined by the Court under Article 3 of the Convention, and a significant body of case-law has been accumulated in cases concerning longer-term isolation.
For the reasons given above, the Court finds that the applicant’s isolation had no repercussions on the conformity of his deprivation of liberty with the requirements of Article 5. Consequently, the applicant’s isolation did not amount to a further deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention. Article 5 § 1 is therefore not applicable to the applicant’s isolation in the disciplinary punishment cell.
The Court therefore finds that, since Article 5 is inapplicable, there has been no violation of Article 5 § 5 of the Convention in this case.
