European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 175

June 2014

Krupko and Others v. Russia - 26587/07

Judgment 26.6.2014 [Section I] See: [2014] ECHR 663

Article 9

Article 9-1

Manifest religion or belief

Disruption of a Jehovah’s Witnesses religious meeting by armed riot police: violation

Article 5

Article 5-1

Deprivation of liberty

Lawful arrest or detention

Detention of participants at religious ceremony of Jehovah’s Witnesses: violation

Facts - The applicants are Jehovah’s Witnesses belonging to various congregations in Moscow. On 12 April 2006 some 400 people, including the four applicants, were about to celebrate the most solemn and significant religious meeting of the year for Jehovah’s Witnesses when the police arrived in large numbers and cordoned off the university building that had been rented for the occasion. Fourteen members of the congregation, including the applicants, were segregated from the rest of the group and taken to minibuses under police escort before being driven to a local police station where they remained for about three hours, until after midnight.

The four applicants brought proceedings before the national courts to complain in particular about the disruption of the service and their detention. In a final judgment of March 2007, the courts held that the police had lawfully stopped the service as it had been held on unsuitable premises under domestic law and that the three hours spent by the applicants at the police station could not be considered as detention.

Law - Article 5: It was established that there was an element of coercion which, notwithstanding the short duration of the detention, was indicative of a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5 § 1. The applicants had produced their identity documents at the request of the police officers, answered the officers’ questions and obeyed their orders. They were not formally suspected of, or charged with, any offence and no criminal or administrative proceedings were instituted against them. The station officer had acknowledged in the domestic proceedings that no elements of an administrative offence had been established. It followed that the applicants’ arrest could not have been effected “for the purpose of bringing [them] before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence” within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 (c). Hence, the deprivation of liberty to which the applicants were subjected did not have any legitimate purpose under Article 5 § 1 and was arbitrary.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 9: The early termination of the service ordered by the police had constituted an interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of religion. It was unnecessary to rule on the question whether that interference was “prescribed by law” because, in any event, it was not “necessary in a democratic society”. The Court had consistently held that, even in cases where the authorities had not been properly notified of a public event but where the participants did not represent a danger to public order, dispersal of a peaceful assembly by the police could not be regarded as having been “necessary in a democratic society”*. This finding applied a fortiori in the circumstances of the present case where the assembly in question was not a tumultuous outdoors event but a solemn religious ceremony in an assembly hall which had not been shown to create any disturbance or danger to public order. The intervention of armed riot police in substantial numbers with the aim of disrupting the ceremony, even if the authorities genuinely believed that lack of advance notice rendered it illegal, followed by the applicants’ arrest and three-hour detention, was disproportionate to the aim of protecting public order.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 30,000 jointly in respect of non-pecuniary damage.

* See, for example, Kasparov and Others v. Russia, 21613/07, 3 October 2013, Information Note 167.

 

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