Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
148
January 2012
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Inhuman treatment
Law – Article 3: In September 2008 the military tribunal had found it established
that at the material time – between 5 and 12 April 2006 – while the applicant was
in prison, he had been forced to undress and to wear military uniform, had been
handcuffed to a bed or a chair for several hours and had been threatened and
beaten. In the tribunal’s view, such acts amounted to ill-treatment within the
meaning of the Criminal Code. The Court saw no reason to depart from those
findings. The treatment meted out to the applicant during his military service had
been such as to cause feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of
humiliating and debasing him and possibly breaking his physical and moral
resistance. This was all the more true since the applicant had also been the
subject of multiple prosecutions and the cumulative nature of the sentences had
had the effect of stifling his intellectual identity. In those circumstances, seen as
a whole and given their seriousness, the manner in which the applicant had been
treated had caused him severe pain and suffering which went beyond the usual
element of humiliation inherent in any criminal conviction or in detention. The
treatment to which the applicant had been subjected on account of his refusal to
serve in the armed forces had been both inhuman and degrading.
(See also Ülke v. Turkey, no. 39437/98, 24 January 2006; Erçep v. Turkey,
no. 43965/04, 22 November 2011, Information Note no. 146; and Bayatyan
v. Armenia [GC], no. 23459/03, 7 July 2011, Information Note no. 143)