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Court of Strasbourg condemns Greece for the
murder of Albanian emigrant Gentian Çelniku
13.07.2007
On July 5, 2007, the Court
of Strasbourg decided unanimously that Greece,
in the case Çelniku vs. Greece, violated article
2 of the European Convention on Human Rights,
which protects the right to life.
The Greek Helsinki Monitor,
on behalf of the family members that complained,
submitted to the Court of Strasbourg the case of
the murder of 20-year old Albanian emigrant
Gentian Çelniku by Greek police forces. The
incident took place on November 21, 2001,
whereby one of the Greek police officers, in an
attempt to arrest Gentian Çelniku, as a person
suspected of involvement in a case whereby other
Albanians were seriously hurt, shot him and
caused his immediate death.
The Court of Strasbourg
decision emphasizes that there was a violation
of article 2 of the European Convention of Human
Rights regarding failure to take the necessary
measures and neglect in carefully organizing the
police operation for the arrest of the victim
and to ensure that any threat to his life and
the life of other persons present at the
incident site would be minimal. Furthermore, in
the context of article 2 of the European
Convention, the Court also considered the lack
of an independent and effective complaint toward
the actions of the police forces.
The Greek Helsinki Monitor
represented this case before the Court of
Strasbourg in the context of a joint project
with the Albanian Helsinki Committee to monitor
respect for the rights of emigrants and of
returned persons, carried out in partnership
with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.
For more information about
the Court of Strasbourg decision, “Çelniku vs.
Greece,” you may go to:
http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?item=3&portal=hbkm&action=html&highlight=&sessionid=1212894&skin=hudoc-pr-en
Also, attached to this
statement, you may find the press release of the
European Court of Human Rights.
For more information, you may contact:
European Court of Human Rights
Council of Europe
67075 Strasbourg-Cedex
France
Tel: +33 (0)3 88 41 20 18
Fax: +33 (0)3 88 41 27 30
e-mail:
webmaster@echr.coe.int
http://www.echr.coe.int
Panayote Dimitras
Spokesperson
Greek Helsinki Monitor
e-mail:
panayote@greekhelsinki.gr
Internet Addresses:
Balkan Human Rights Web Pages:
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr>http://cm.greekhelsinki.gr
The Balkan Human Rights List:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/balkanhr/messages/
The Greek Human Rights List:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greekhr/messages/
Center of Documentation and Information on
Minorities in Europe -
Southeast Europe: <http://www.cedime.net>http://www.cedime.net
Mail Address:
P.O. Box 60820
GR-15304 Glyka Nera, Greece
Telephone and Fax:
Tel. +30-2103472259
Fax +30-2106018760
Albanian Helsinki
Committee
Rr. Gjin Bue Shpata,
P. 5/1, Ap. 4
Tirana-Albania
Tel. & Fax: ++ 355 4 233671
Office e-mail:
office@ahc.org.al
Web-page:
www.ahc.org.al
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
484
05.07.2007
Press release issued by the Registrar
CHAMBER JUDGMENT
CELNIKU v. GREECE
The European Court of Human
Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber
judgment
in the case of
Celniku v. Greece (application
no. 21449/04).
The Court held unanimously
that there had been
·
a violation
of Article 2
(right to life) of the European Convention on
Human Rights on account of shortcomings in the
organisation of the police operation in which
the applicants’ brother died;
·
a violation of
Article 2 on account of shortcomings
in the inquiry into the death of the applicants’
brother.
Under Article 41 (just
satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court
awarded the applicants jointly 4,010 euros (EUR)
for pecuniary damage, EUR 20,000 for
non-pecuniary damage and EUR 5,000 for costs and
expenses. (The judgment is available only in
French.)
1. Principal facts
The applicants, Mirela
Celniku and her sister Reimonda Celniku, are
Albanian nationals who were born in 1976 and
1974 respectively and live in Athens. Their
brother, Gentjan Celniku, better known to the
police by the nickname “the Chinaman”, was
fatally wounded at the age of 20 during an
attempted police arrest.
On the afternoon of 21
November 2001 I.R., an off-duty police officer,
was walking in Athens city centre when he was
told by an informant that the man known to
police as “the Chinaman” was in the vicinity of
Amerikis Square. The man in question, Gentjan
Celniku, was suspected of involvement in an
incident in which other persons of Albanian
origin had suffered serious injuries, and was
reputed to carry a knife at all times.
Having been alerted to the
situation by I.R., senior officer V., leading a
group of three more police officers, arrived in
Lefkosias Street near the café where the suspect
and four other Albanian nationals were reported
to be. After obtaining authorisation to
apprehend the five individuals concerned and
asking I.R. not to take part in the operation,
V. and the three officers entered the café and
ordered the suspects to raise their arms in the
air and lie down on the ground. Mr Celniku
refused to comply and tried to slip his hand
inside his raincoat. Believing his colleagues to
be in danger, I.R. intervened, moving towards Mr
Celniku with his firearm in his hand. The latter
kicked him in the right hand and a shot went off
which struck Mr Celniku in the head, killing him
instantly.
In a statement made the
following day, I.R. said that he had acted
instinctively to protect his colleagues and that
immediately after the fatal shot he had seen a
knife in a pool of blood. Three of the police
officers involved said that I.R. had found the
knife after searching the victim’s body; I.R.
later acknowledged that this had been the case.
An administrative inquiry
was started straight away to ascertain whether
the use of force had been justified. In the
course of the inquiry statements were taken from
18 persons, most of them eyewitnesses, and an
autopsy was performed. In July 2003 the police
disciplinary board decided that there were no
grounds for taking disciplinary action against
I.R. as the victim himself had been solely
responsible for the fatal shot being fired. This
decision was upheld in January 2004.
Meanwhile, criminal
proceedings had been instituted against I.R. for
unintentional homicide. In November 2003 he was
acquitted on the ground that the fatal wounding
had not resulted from negligence on his part.
2. Procedure and composition of the Court
The application was lodged
with the European Court of Human Rights on 21
May 2004.
Judgment was given by a
Chamber of 7 judges, composed as follows:
Loukis
Loucaides
(Cypriot),
President,
Christos Rozakis
(Greek),
Nina Vajić
(Croatian),
Khanlar Hajiyev
(Azerbaijani),
Dean Spielmann
(Luxemburger),
Sverre Erik Jebens
(Norwegian),
Giorgio Malinverni
(Swiss), judges,
and also Søren
Nielsen,
Section Registrar.
3. Summary of the judgment
Complaints
The applicants alleged that
the police officers seeking to arrest their
brother had used excessive firepower which had
resulted in his death and complained that no
effective inquiry had been conducted into the
facts in question. They further alleged that the
events at issue had been the result of
discriminatory attitudes towards persons of
Albanian origin. They relied on Article 2 (right
to life), Article 13 (right to an effective
remedy) and Article 14 (prohibition of
discrimination).
Decision of the Court
Article 2 of the Convention
As to Mr Celniku’s death
The use of lethal force
The Court considered that
there was no reason to question the facts as
established by the Greek courts. It therefore
took the view that the fatal shot had been
triggered not by any deliberate action on the
part of the police officer I.R. but by the
sudden reaction of the victim, consisting in
kicking the police officer’s hand in which the
weapon was held. Accordingly, the Court
considered that, in the circumstances of the
case, the use of lethal force was not
attributable to the Greek State.
The police operation
The Court observed in
particular that, in defiance of V.’s orders,
I.R. had approached Mr Celniku with the hand in
which he was holding the weapon outstretched, so
that he was within arm’s reach of the victim. He
had thus of his own initiative laid himself open
to the actions of the victim which had resulted
in the fatal shot being fired.
In the Court’s view, the
fact that the situation had degenerated to such
a degree was all the more inexcusable given that
it was an operation planned by the police, which
the officers concerned should have been able to
prepare with care.
The Court was also mindful
of the fact that at the relevant time the use of
weapons by agents of the State was governed by
legislation which was recognised to be obsolete
and inadequate in a modern democratic society.
The system in operation did not provide those
responsible for applying the laws with clear
guidelines and criteria concerning the use of
force in peacetime. The lack of clear rules
might also explain why I.R. had acted hastily,
which he would probably not have done had he
received the proper training.
In the circumstances,
although the death of the victim was not in
itself attributable to the Greek authorities,
the way in which the police operation was
conducted showed that the police had not taken
appropriate care to ensure that any risk to the
lives of Mr Celniku and the other persons
present at the scene of the incident was kept to
a minimum. They had therefore been negligent in
their course of action. Accordingly, the Court
held that there had been a violation of Article
2.
As to the inquiry into Mr Celniku’s death
The Court noted that the
authorities had shown their willingness to
conduct an administrative inquiry in order to
determine whether the use of force had been
justified in the circumstances. However, there
were problems as to the independence and
thoroughness of the inquiry.
The Court observed first of
all that the police officers in charge of the
inquiry were attached to the Attiki police
headquarters, as were the officers involved in
the incident. Hence, doubts could be raised as
to the ability of the officers concerned to
conduct an independent inquiry, as it was highly
likely that they would have known the officers
involved personally and have worked with them in
the past, creating inevitable feelings of
professional solidarity. In the Court’s view,
this was liable to undermine the independence of
the inquiry and erode the confidence of the
public and of those individuals with an interest
in its being conducted objectively.
The Court was further
struck by the fact that the police officers
involved had not taken the proper steps to
gather the evidence in the immediate aftermath
of the incident. In the Court’s view, I.R. had
been the person least qualified to search the
body of the victim, given that it was he who had
fired the fatal shot and that he had, in
principle, an interest in the victim’s being
found in possession of a weapon. Moreover,
following the incident the police officers
involved had not preserved the scene, thus
preventing the inquiry from gathering important
evidence.
In general terms, the Court
noted the absence of clear rules and
instructions on the procedures to be followed by
police officers in such situations. This could
explain why the officers involved in the
incident had acted spontaneously without
following a set procedure. In the circumstances
the Court held that there had been a violation
of Article 2 in the present case on account of
the lack of an independent and effective
inquiry. In view of that finding, it did not
consider it necessary to examine whether there
had been a violation of Article 13 (right to an
effective remedy).
Article 14
The Court did not consider
it established “beyond reasonable doubt” that
the actions of the State agents in the instant
case had been motivated by racial prejudice
against persons of Albanian origin. It therefore
declared the complaint under Article 14
inadmissible as being manifestly ill-founded.
***
The Court’s judgments are
accessible on its Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).
Press contacts
Emma Hellyer (telephone: 00 33
(0)3 90 21 42 15)
Stéphanie Klein
(telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 21 54)
Beverley Jacobs
(telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 21)
Tracey Turner-Tretz
(telephone : 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30)
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.
Under Article 43 of the
Convention, 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.
This summary by the Registry does
not bind the Court.
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