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Cite as: [2011] ECHR 2066

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THIRD SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 2959/11
by THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEFENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS
IN ROMANIA – HELSINKI COMMITTEE
against Romania

The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 22 November 2011 as a Chamber composed of:

Josep Casadevall, President,
Egbert Myjer,
Ján Šikuta,
Ineta Ziemele,
Nona Tsotsoria,
Mihai Poalelungi,
Kristina Pardalos, judges,
and Marialena Tsirli, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 23 December 2010,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

The applicant, the Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania – Helsinki Committee (Asociaţia Pentru Apărarea Drepturilor Omului în România Comitetul Helsinki (APADOR CH) – “the applicant association”), is a non-governmental organisation registered in Romania which lodged the present application on behalf of Mr Ionel Garcea, who died on 19 July 2007 in prison, and on its own behalf. The applicant association is represented before the Court by Ms Nicoleta Popescu and Mr Dan Mihai, lawyers practising in Bucharest.

A. The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant association, may be summarised as follows.

1. The death of Mr Ionel Garcea

At the material time, Mr Garcea was serving a seven-year sentence for a rape that he had consistently denied having committed. He had no identified relatives.

He was diagnosed with epilepsy, personality disorder (impulsive and explosive), polymorphic psychosis and phlebitis of both legs. During his detention he had numerous conflicts with the prison warders, the police and the prosecutor, on several occasions being reprimanded for “insulting authority” (înjurii aduse cadrelor) and for self-mutilation (beating nails into his forehead).

In 2002, when he started serving his sentence, Mr Garcea contacted APADOR CH from the police headquarters to inform it of his arrest. He also wrote to the association from prison. The association paid for his legal assistance in a civil suit for damages brought against the State in connection with his detention in a previous case and in criminal proceedings and occasionally gave him material support, such as medicines, paper, pens and prepaid telephone cards.

On 17 November 2004, members of the applicant association visited Mr Garcea in Jilava prison hospital. He told them that in August 2004 he had been beaten by the prison intervention force and then handcuffed and chained to the hospital bed for two weeks. APADOR-CH complained to the Prison Administration about Mr Garcea’s situation and more generally about the poor living conditions in Jilava prison hospital and the lack of adequate medical treatment for mentally ill prisoners. It urged the Prison Administration to take measures.

On 17 December 2004 the Prison Administration replied to APADOR-CH’s complaint; as far as Mr Garcea’s situation was concerned, it stated that its inquiries had not revealed any aspects in breach of prison rules and that his immobilisation had been made necessary by his violent behaviour and had been approved by the prison governor.

In the beginning of 2005 Mr Garcea attempted suicide and as a result went into a fourth-degree coma.

In May 2005 Mr Garcea was transferred to Rahova Prison, after a one week stay in Rahova prison hospital where, according to the medical record given to the applicant association after his death, he did not receive any treatment for his phlebitis.

In June 2005 Mr Garcea was operated on in a civilian hospital in order to have metal fragments removed from his head (pieces of nails that he had beaten into his forehead). After the operation, the doctors performed a brain scan on Mr Garcea, only to discover that some pieces of metal had been left inside his head. Mr Garcea underwent another operation one month later.

In August 2005, members of the applicant association paid Mr Garcea another visit. He complained to them that he had been beaten up on several occasions by the warders. In particular, he stated that on 26 July 2005, at the end of a court hearing, the prison guards had pushed and slapped him in order to make him move faster. He had protested. When they had returned to the prison, the warders had tried to push him into a separate room to beat him. He objected, broke a window and kept a piece of the broken glass in his hand with the intention of killing himself. The warders interpreted his gesture as an attack and called the prison intervention forces, who chained him to a bed and beat him until he lost consciousness. He was then transported to Jilava hospital.

The applicant association complained to the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice about that incident, but received no answer.

Following their visit, the members of APADOR-CH complained to the Prison Administration about the conditions of detention in which Mr Garcea was being held, which they considered inappropriate for his situation. They also urged the Prison Administration to provide him with medical treatment for his various conditions; they pointed out that his mental health was visibly deteriorating and that despite his repeated visits to the hospitals, he had not received adequate and prompt medical treatment. Their willingness to provide the medicines for him had been counteracted by the delays with which the doctors had issued the necessary prescriptions. They contended that, in their view, the lack of medical treatment for epilepsy and phlebitis amounted to torture.

They also urged the prison authorities to stop provoking violent reactions on Mr Garcea’s part through their attitudes towards him and to stop using force against him.

Lastly, the members of the applicant association asked the Prosecutor’s Office to deal more expeditiously with Mr Garcea’s complaint about ill treatment.

In June 2007, while he was being held in Jilava hospital, Mr Garcea beat another nail into his forehead. On 7 June he was operated on in a civilian hospital, and then he was sent to Rahova prison with a diagnosis of sepsis, post-extraction symptoms and acute bronchopneumonia.

From 16 to 26 June Mr Garcea’s condition continued to deteriorate. The Rahova prison authorities decided to send him back to the civilian hospital for examination and possibly a new operation. On 4 July he returned to Rahova, where he remained, in the prison hospital, until his death on 19 July.

On 27 July 2007 the applicant association asked the Prison Administration to investigate the medical treatment given to Mr Garcea and the cause of his death. It raised several queries, asking in particular how Mr Garcea could have contracted bronchopneumonia when he had been held only in hospitals for the past few years and whether the medical treatment had been adequate, and pointing to the lack of reaction by the medical personnel to the continuous deterioration of Mr Garcea’s condition in June and July 2007. The association contended that although according to Joint Order No. 995/2007 issued by the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health on 6 June 2007 (which replaced a similar order from 2003), a special commission had to investigate the causes of deaths in detention, no steps had been taken to that end in Mr Garcea’s case.

The applicant association asked to be informed about the progress of the investigations, adding that the deceased had no relatives.

2. The domestic proceedings

On 1 August 2007 APADOR-CH sent its report into Mr Garcea’s death to the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Bucharest County Court in order to help the investigation into the matter.

On 19 July 2007 the prosecutor ordered the forensic doctor to examine the cause of Mr Garcea’s death. The medical report concluded that the death was caused by “multiple organ failure, as a consequence of a cerebral abscess developed because of the repeated introduction of a metal object, necessitating neurosurgery and lengthy stays in hospital”. The doctor also concluded that there was not enough evidence to suggest that there had been inadequate medical assistance in the case.

On 12 October 2007 the file was sent to the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Bucharest Court of Appeal, which, on 23 February 2009, decided not to prosecute the prison doctors for improper conduct and endangering a person incapable of taking care of himself. He sent the file back to the prosecutor attached to the County Court in so far as the complaint concerned allegations of ill-treatment in detention.

The prosecutor’s decision was communicated to the applicant association on 3 March 2009.

The association objected to the decision, but on 9 April 2009 the complaint was dismissed by the Prosecutor General from the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Bucharest Court of Appeal. He considered that the association lacked locus standi to make the objection; he then re-examined the evidence of his own motion and concluded that the prosecutor’s decision was correct.

APADOR-CH lodged a complaint with the Bucharest Court of Appeal against the prosecutor’s decision of 9 April 2009, seeking to have the file sent back and to have an indictment filed by the prosecutor. It argued that Mr Garcea had not received adequate medical treatment in prison and that his death had been caused by medical negligence in the prison hospitals. It also argued that the investigation had not been exhaustive, as the prosecutor had done no more than detail the medical treatment that Mr Garcea had received, without examining whether there had been medical negligence in his case. The applicant association also complained that the prosecutor had not examined the allegations of ill treatment.

The Court of Appeal gave its ruling on 22 July 2009. It decided that the applicant association had locus standi, as the High Court of Cassation and Justice had decided, in 2006, that NGOs acting in the field of human rights had the capacity to object to steps taken by the prosecutor. On the merits, the court found that the prosecutor’s decision was correct, and was supported by the evidence in the file. It therefore dismissed the applicant association’s objection and ordered it to pay 100 Romanian lei (RON) in costs incurred by the State and RON 1,500 in costs incurred by the accused prison doctors.