European Court of Human Rights - Chamber Judgment - Freimanis and Lidums v. Latvia

CHAMBER JUDGMENT FREIMANIS AND L?DUMS v. LATVIA

The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Freimanis and L?dums v. Latvia (application nos. 73443/01 and 74860/01).

The Court held unanimously that there had been:

• - 

  a violation of Article 5  3 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on Human Rights on account of the length of the applicants' detention pending trial;

• - 

  a violation of Article 5  4 (right to have lawfulness of detention decided speedily by a court) on account of the impossibility for the applicants to obtain a review by an impartial tribunal of the lawfulness of their detention;

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  a violation of Article 6  1 (right to a fair trial within a reasonable time) on account of the length of the proceedings against the applicants;

• - 

  a violation of Article 6  2 (presumption of innocence).

The Court concluded that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non pecuniary damage sustained by the applicants and dismissed the remainder of the applicants' claims for just satisfaction. (The judgment is available only in French.)

• 1. 

  • -. 

    Principal facts

The applicants, T?lis Freimanis and Alvis L?dums, both Latvian nationals, are former businessmen. Mr Freimanis was born in 1946 and lives in Riga, and Mr L?dums was born in 1954 and lives in Jelgava (Latvia).

Mr Freimanis was chairman of Latvia's largest bank, Banka Baltija, and Mr L?dums was one of its directors. The bank went into liquidation, causing severe damage to the Latvian economy and the financial ruin of hundreds of thousands of people. The prosecutor dealing with the case suspected Mr Freimanis and the former chairman of the bank's supervisory board, Mr Lavents, of the offence of sabotage (kaitniec?ba) for having authorised the transfer of approximately 139 million euros to a Russian bank based in Moscow in exchange for an undertaking to make a payment in the form of Russian government bonds. They were also accused of carrying out fraudulent actions in order to create a prosperous and stable image for the bank.

In June 1995 Mr Freimanis and Mr Lavents were placed under investigation for sabotage and were questioned. Mr L?dums was questioned as a witness.

Having been placed in detention pending trial on 28 June 1995, Mr Freimanis was admitted to hospital following a heart attack. He was transferred to prison on 29 August 1995. On 5 October 1995 the court allowed one of his appeals and ordered that he be placed under house arrest (m?jas arests), whereby he was to be kept under supervision and, in particular, to be prohibited from leaving his flat.

On 30 January 1996 Mr L?dums was placed under investigation for aggravated embezzlement (mantas piesavin?san?s) and was made the subject of a compulsory residence order (paraksts par dz?vesvietas nemain?sanu).

The case was sent for trial before Riga Regional Court. The court placed Mr Freimanis under police supervision on 30 June 1997. On 14 October 1997 it ordered that Mr Lavents, who had hitherto been in detention, be placed under house arrest. The day after that decision, Latvia's main daily newspaper at the time, Diena, published a statement by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice - which was also reproduced in the Latvian Official Gazette (Latvijas Vestnesis) - in which they expressed their disagreement with the amendment of the preventive measures imposed on Mr Lavents. The following day, the judges dealing with the case withdrew because of pressure "from the Government and the public", and the case was assigned to a different bench of the same court.

On 25 September 1998 Riga Regional Court ordered the detention of the three defendants in prison. They were arrested in court and transferred to Riga Central Prison.

On a number of occasions during the trial, Mr Lavents challenged the presiding judge of the Regional Court, Mrs Steinerte, and the other two judges dealing with the case, accusing them of bias and of concealing a significant piece of exonerating evidence. An order by the other two judges for Mrs Steinerte to withdraw was revoked on 14 December 1999 by the Senate of the Supreme Court, at the prosecution's request. The challenge was referred to the Riga Regional Court, which, with exactly the same members sitting and Mrs Steinerte presiding, dismissed it. Furthermore, in November and December 1999 Mrs Steinerte made a number of statements to the press in two dailies, Lauku av?ze and Respublika, and in the newspaper Kommersant Baltic. In them she criticised the conduct of the defence and alluded to the outcome of the trial; she also expressed her surprise that Mr Lavents was persisting in denying the charges and called on him to prove his innocence.

On 28 December 2001 Mr Freimanis and Mr L?dums were sentenced to six years' imprisonment and three years and three months' imprisonment respectively. Mr Lavents was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment. Mr L?dums, whose period of detention pending trial accounted in full for his prison sentence, was released immediately. However, the period during which Mr Freimanis had been under house arrest was not counted as part of his sentence. The applicants appealed against their convictions.

Shortly after the judgment delivered by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Lavents v. Latvia (see press release No. 606, 2002), on 27 January 2003, Mr Freimanis and Mr Lavents were released and placed under police supervision.

In a judgment of 6 May 2005 the Riga Regional Court, to which the case had been referred back after the original judgment had been quashed, upheld the convictions of Mr Freimanis and Mr L?dums and the sentences imposed on them, and reduced Mr Lavents's prison term to seven years and seven months. By way of additional penalty, all three had their property confiscated.

The applicants announced their intention to appeal against that decision.

• 2. 

  Procedure and composition of the Court

The applications were lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 28 August and 5 October 2001 respectively. Following a decision on 30 January 2003, the Chamber joined the two applications together and declared them partly admissible.

Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:

Bostjan M. Zupan?i? (Slovenian), President,

Lucius Caflisch (Swiss) [2] ,

Corneliu Bîrsan (Romanian),

Vladimiro Zagrebelsky (Italian),

Alvina Gyulumyan (Armenian),

Renate Jaeger (German),

Ineta Ziemele (Latvian), judges,

and also Mark Villiger, Deputy Section Registrar.

• 3. 

  Summary of the judgment [3]

Complaints

The applicants contended in particular that the criminal charges against them had been examined by a court offering no guarantees of independence or impartiality, the composition of which had been in breach of the relevant provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure. They also complained of the length of their detention pending trial, the excessive length of the criminal proceedings and the lack of effective judicial review of their detention. Finally, they complained that their right to be presumed innocent had been infringed.

They relied on Article 5  3 and 4 and Article 6  1 and 2 of the Convention.

Decision of the Court

Article 5  3

The Court pointed out that it had jurisdiction to examine the complaint concerning the length of the applicants' detention pending trial only with regard to the period after the Convention's entry into force in respect of Latvia on 27 June 1997. However, it reiterated that it had to take into account the period already spent in custody by that date in order to assess whether the length of the detention had been reasonable.

The Court also reiterated that house arrest amounted to a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5 of the Convention. The same was true of periods spent in hospital, as the person concerned was, legally speaking, still in detention pending trial for the purposes of domestic law. Police supervision and compulsory residence orders, on the other hand, were simply restrictions on the individual's freedom of movement rather than a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5.

The Court noted that Mr Freimanis had spent an initial period of one year, ten months and a day in detention pending trial, only three days of which had fallen during the period after the Convention had entered into force in respect of Latvia. After being returned to prison he had been detained, as had Mr L?dums, for three years, three months and three days.

With regard to Mr Freimanis's first period in custody, which had thus lasted only three days after the entry into force of the Convention in respect of Latvia, the Court considered that it did not exceed the limits of what was "reasonable" within the meaning of Article 5  3.

As to the applicants' detention between 25 September 1998 and 28 December 2001, the Court observed that the Regional Court had on eight occasions refused applications for the applicants' release, stating the grounds for its decisions in an abstract and succinct manner and merely referring to the criteria set out in the relevant provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In that connection, the Court noted that the Regional Court had ordered Mr Freimanis's return to prison of its own motion, without having been requested to do so by the prosecution and without consulting the parties. In the circumstances, it should at least have provided an explanation in the grounds for the order. The same was true in the case of Mr L?dums, who had not been placed in detention pending trial until two-and-a-half years after being placed under investigation.

Accordingly, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 5  3.

Article 5  4

The Court recalled that, in Lavents v. Latvia, it had found that the Riga Regional Court, which had been called upon to consider the merits of the case and to examine the applicant's applications for release, had not been an impartial tribunal and that the bench dealing with the case had not been "established by law" with regard to the period after 14 December 1999. It had accordingly found a violation of Article 5  4.

Seeing no reason to reach a different decision with regard to the applicants in the applicants' case, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 5  4.

Article 6  1

The Court considered that the proceedings had begun on the date on which Mr Freimanis had first been questioned as a suspect, that is, on 1 June 1995, and had ended on 6 May 2005. The proceedings, which were reportedly pending before the appellate court, had therefore lasted for almost ten years, including nearly eight years since the entry into force of the Convention in respect of Latvia.

In the case of Mr L?dums, the proceedings had already lasted for over nine years and three months, including approximately seven years and ten months since the entry into force of the Convention in respect of Latvia.

In its Lavents v. Latvia judgment, the Court had found a violation of the applicant's right to have his case heard within a reasonable time. In the applicants' case it noted that, although more than three years had elapsed since that judgment, a decision had just been given at first instance in the same set of criminal proceedings.

The Court therefore held that there had been a violation of Article 6  1.

Article 6  2

The Court recalled that, in the Lavents v. Latvia judgment, it had noted that Mrs Steinerte's statements to the press had appeared to show that she was persuaded of the applicant's guilt. She had even suggested that he prove that he was not guilty, an attitude which in the Court's opinion was at variance with the very principle of the presumption of innocence, one of the fundamental principles governing a democratic State.

The Court saw no reason to reach a different finding with regard to Mr Freimanis and Mr L?dums. While Mrs Steinerte's statements had apparently mentioned only Mr Lavents and Mr Freimanis by name, in most of her remarks she had used the terms "the defence" and "the accused", clearly referring to all three defendants, including Mr. L?dums.

Accordingly, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 6  2.

***

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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. Since 1 November 1998 it has sat as a full-time Court composed of an equal number of judges to that of the States party to the Convention. The Court examines the admissibility and merits of applications submitted to it. It sits in Chambers of 7 judges or, in exceptional cases, as a Grand Chamber of 17 judges. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe supervises the execution of the Court's judgments.

[1] Under Article 43 of the European Convention on Human Rights, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer.

[2] Judge elected in respect of Liechtenstein.

[3] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.