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issued by the Registrar of the Court   no. 093   03.02.2011   17-year old’s unlawful detention and questioning without a   lawyer or his parents amounted to inhuman and degrading   treatment   In today’s Chamber judgment in the case Dushka v. Ukraine (application no. 29175/04),   which is not final1, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there   had been:   Two violations of Article   (prohibition of inhuman and degrading   treatment/lack of effective investigation) of the European Convention on Human   Rights   The case concerned Mr Dushka’s allegation that he was tortured in police custody in   order to make him confess to a robbery, and that the ensuing head and kidney injuries   as well as stress he had suffered had resulted in his depression and a chronic kidney   infection.   Principal facts   The applicant, Yuriy Dushka, was a Ukrainian national who was born in 1985 and lived in   Bilgorod-Dnistrovsky (Ukraine) until his death in March 2005. His mother, Tatyana   Dushka, pursued the application after his death.   On 18 November 2002 Mr Dushka, 17- years’ old at the time, was arrested in a bar in   Bilgorod-Dnistrovsky and taken to the local police station for questioning about a   robbery. Later the same day, having left the police station, he was arrested again when   walking down a street. Charged with refusal to comply with the lawful demands of the   police, he was brought before Bilgorod-Dnistrovsky Court which sentenced him to seven   days’ administrative detention. That decision was made without his parents being   informed or a lawyer being appointed.   Mr Dushka claimed that police officers severely ill-treated him during his administrative   detention. He alleged in particular that, handcuffed to a radiator, he was beaten with a   plastic water bottle, making him pass out on several occasions. As a result, he confessed   to the robbery and, without a lawyer or his parents, wrote out confession statements   dictated by the police. As proof, he provided copies of those statements, which bear only   his and the officers’ signatures.   On 19 November 2002 formal criminal proceedings were brought against Mr Dushka for   robbery. He was released, however, on 21 November 2002, Bilgorod-Dnistrovsky Court   having reviewed his sentence and reduced it to three days’ detention. Both decisions by   Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month   period following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the   Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges considers whether the case deserves further   examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referral   request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.   Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for   supervision of its execution. Further information about the execution process can be found here:   www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution     that court were subsequently quashed by way of supervisory review, it being found that   Mr Dushka should not have been subjected to administrative detention as he was a   minor.   Following his release, Mr Dushka hired a lawyer and retracted his statements, alleging   that he had made his previous confessions under duress.   He also immediately informed the law-enforcement authorities that he had been   ill-treated. The ensuing investigation, which lasted three years, was closed and reopened   on a number of occasions but always ended with the prosecuting authorities refusing to   bring criminal proceedings due to lack of evidence.   During the investigation two expert medical examinations were ordered. The first,   carried out in November 2002, reported abrasions and bruises on different parts of   Mr Dushka’s body as well as a kidney contusion. The second was carried out in January   and concluded that the injuries he had sustained were most likely to have been   caused by blunt objects and that Mr Dushka’s depression and chronic kidney infection   could be connected to a traumatic experience in November 2002.   Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court   Relying in particular on Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) and   Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the Convention, Mr Dushka alleged that the   police had ill-treated him in custody in order to make him confess to a robbery and that   the ensuing investigation into his allegations had been inadequate.   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 26 July 2004.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven, composed as follows:   Peer Lorenzen (Denmark), President,   Karel Jungwiert (the Czech Republic),   Mark Villiger (Liechtenstein),   Isabelle Berro-Lefèvre (Monaco),   Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (“the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”),   Ganna Yudkivska (Ukraine),   Julia Laffranque (Estonia), Judges,   and also Claudia Westerdiek, Section Registrar.   Decision of the Court   Article 3   Ill-treatment   The Court found that Mr Dushka's account of how he had sustained his injuries, namely,   police ill-treatment during interrogation, was sufficiently detailed, and consistent with   the expert medical reports of November 2002 and January 2005. The Government, on   the other hand, had failed to provide any coherent and substantiated alternative account   of the relevant events, in spite of several years of investigations. The Court therefore   held that the State was responsible for Mr Dushka’s injuries which he had sustained as a   result of ill-treatment.   Indeed, regardless of whether the police had resorted to physical violence or not,   Mr Dushka’s arrest in ambiguous circumstances, as well as his administrative detention,   officially declared unlawful by the domestic judicial authorities, aroused a strong   suspicion that the police had arrested Mr Dushka and placed him in detention as a   means to break his moral resistance and obtain a confession. The fact that that   confession had been made in a setting lacking such procedural guarantees as the   presence of a lawyer, and had then been retracted upon release, also pointed to the   conclusion that it might not have been given freely.   The Court found that such practice, especially given Mr Dushka's vulnerable age,   qualified as inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of Article 3.   Investigation   The Court noted that, although Mr Dushka had promptly informed the authorities of his   ill-treatment, the investigation had lasted more than three years and had not established   what had happened to him during his arrest and custody or identified those responsible   for his injuries.   Numerous administrative or court orders, stating that the investigation had been   perfunctory and one-sided, remitted the case for further investigation. However, the   prosecuting authorities simply responded by repeating the same conclusion (lack of   evidence) each time for their refusal to bring criminal proceedings. In spite of specific   instructions issued by the courts and the supervising prosecuting authorities, the   investigation had therefore not answered Mr Dushka’s allegations, providing for example   a plausible explanation for his injuries or a substantiated response concerning the   unlawfulness of his arrest and detention as well as questioning in violation of procedural   guarantees (the absence of a lawyer or his parents).   The Court reiterated that there had been a number of other recent cases brought before   it against Ukraine in which it had found a violation of Article 3 on account of the lack of   an effective investigation into allegations of ill-treatment. Noting that Mr Dushka’s case   was similar, it concluded that there had been a further violation of Article 3 concerning   the   lack   of   an   effective   investigation   into   Mr   Dushka’s   complaint   of   ill-treatment while in police custody.   Given that finding, the Court considered that it was not necessary to examine   Mr Dushka’s complaint concerning the effectiveness of the investigation under Article 13.   Article 41 (just satisfaction)   The Court held that Ukraine was to pay Mr Dushka’s estate 18,000 euros (EUR) in   respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 150 to his mother in respect of costs and   expenses.   The judgment is available only in English.   This press release is a document produced by the Registry. It does not bind the Court.   Decisions, judgments and further information about the Court can be found on its   Internet site. To receive the Court’s press releases, please subscribe to the Court’s RSS   feeds.   Press contacts   [email protected] | tel: +33 3 90 21 42 08   Tracey Turner-Tretz (tel: + 33 3 88 41 35 30)   Emma Hellyer (tel: + 33 3 90 21 42 15)   Kristina Pencheva-Malinowski (tel: + 33 3 88 41 35 70)   Céline Menu-Lange (tel: + 33 3 90 21 58 77)   Frédéric Dolt (tel: + 33 3 90 21 53 39)   Nina Salomon (tel: + 33 3 90 21 49 79)   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of   Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European   Convention on Human Rights.   4