TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
AP2 (Applicant): No, we didn't.
AP2 (Applicant): We developed one year before, in 2003, a program aiming to advocate for the rights of the people with mental disability in Romania.
AP2 (Applicant): And one of our main tools in this program was to monitor different places of detention.
AP2 (Applicant): Two days before our visit to Puanamare was organized, we find out from the media that 80 persons died in the Puanamare Hospital because of malnourished hypothermia and things like this.
AP2 (Applicant): Therefore, we decided to go there on the 20th February, 2004.
AP2 (Applicant): Actually, the monitor was my colleague, Georgiana Pascu, present here.
AP2 (Applicant): She was the only one there.
AP2 (Applicant): And yes, the manager of the hospital was all the time with my colleague.
AP2 (Applicant): She joined Georgiana Pascu during all her visit in the Puanamare Hospital.
AP2 (Applicant): The Puanamare Hospital is a huge ward with very many buildings, with more than 500 persons there.
AP2 (Applicant): At the end of this huge warehouse, let's say, there was another building.
AP2 (Applicant): Georgiana Pascu wanted to visit this building, and especially a room that was locked.
AP2 (Applicant): She asked the director, what is here?
AP2 (Applicant): The manager of this hospital said, it's nothing.
AP2 (Applicant): It's just an empty room.
AP2 (Applicant): Please open this room.
AP2 (Applicant): And the director of the hospital asked somebody to bring the key because the room was closed.
AP2 (Applicant): And somewhere behind the door, there was one single bed with Valentin Kampanou, in the condition you have already known.
AP2 (Applicant): So yes, the manager was there.
AP2 (Applicant): Georgiana Pascu asked to do something for this young person.
AP2 (Applicant): He said that, one moment, please, that Valentin Kampanou was brought by the child protection and left there.
AP2 (Applicant): And they have no possibilities to transfer him because he is a social care.
AP2 (Applicant): It was not an emergency care.
AP2 (Applicant): This was the response.
AP2 (Applicant): The other question was about High Court of Cassation, why we didn't challenge this case in front of the High Court of Cassation of Justice, if I understood correctly.
AP2 (Applicant): The case run by the High Court of Cassation on Justice, it was not a case on merits.
AP2 (Applicant): We are discussing now about the other file with other person dead.
AP2 (Applicant): And on this file, there were different types of runnings before the Romanian courts on merits and on an objection raised by the prosecutor regarding our local standing.
AP2 (Applicant): Only in this case, only related to this objection raised by this prosecutor, we came along to the High Court of Cassation of Justice.
AP2 (Applicant): And this was the end.
AP2 (Applicant): At the time we challenged this present case, Valentin Kampanou, we have already had the local standing given by the High Court of Cassation of Justice.
AP2 (Applicant): So we have no material competence or procedural competence to go again to the High Court of Cassation of Justice.
Dean Spielmann (JudgeP): The judgment will be delivered later and the parties will be informed of the date of delivery and I declare the hearing closed.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Bonjour.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Je salue tous les participants à cette audience publique devant la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme, laquelle se tient par visioconférence en raison de la crise sanitaire.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): À cet égard, je voudrais commencer par remercier la partie récréante et le gouvernement pour leur coopération dans la préparation de cette audience sur le fonds de l'affaire Denis et Irvine contre Belgique, que je déclare à présent ouverte.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Je tiens aussi à signaler que cette audience sera enregistrée dans son intégralité et diffusée sur la toile afin d'assurer son caractère public.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Le podcast sera disponible sur le site Internet de la Cour aujourd'hui à partir de 14h30.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Les requêtes ont été introduites devant la Cour le 21 août 2017 par un ressortissant belge, M. Jamie Denis,
Robert Spano (JudgeP): et un ressortissant britannique, M. Derek Irvine, en vertu de l'article 34 de la Convention.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Elles ont été attribuées à la quatrième section de la Cour, conformément à l'article 52, paragraphe 1 du règlement de la Cour.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Les requêtes ont été communiquées au gouvernement le 12 février 2018.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Le 8 octobre 2019, une chambre de la quatrième section a rendu son arrêt.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Elle a déclaré les requêtes recevables et a conclu à l'unanimité à l'absence de violation de l'article 5, paragraphe 1 et article 5, paragraphe 4 de la Convention.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Le 7 janvier 2020, la partie récurrente a demandé le renvoi de l'affaire devant la Grande Chambre, conformément à l'article 43 de la Convention, et cette demande a été acceptée par le Collège de la Grande Chambre le 24 février 2020.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Le gouvernement est représenté par son agent, Mme Isabelle Niedlispacher, du Service public fédéral de la justice, assisté de M. Koen Lemmens, conseiller, et par Mme Justine Lefebvre, conseillère.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Les requêtes sont représentées par M. Peter Verpoorten, avocat.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Je salue les comparants au nom de la Cour.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Ayant consulté l'agent du gouvernement et le représentant des requêtes, j'ai fixé ainsi l'ordre des paroles.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): Nous entendrons successivement M. Verpoorten pour les requérants, puis Mme Niedlispacher et M. Lemmens pour le gouvernement.
Robert Spano (JudgeP): M. Verpoorten, I now give you the floor. Please, you have the floor.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. President, Honorable Judges of the Court,
AP1 (Applicant): Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a guarantee for the liberty of the person.
AP1 (Applicant): The right to liberty and security is of the highest importance in a democratic society.
AP1 (Applicant): Only in a limited number of situations provided by Article 5 can one be deprived of liberty.
AP1 (Applicant): These situations furthermore need to be regulated by domestic law.
AP1 (Applicant): One of these enumerated situations concerns the necessary detention of the mentally ill.
AP1 (Applicant): The Belgian domestic law regarding the detention of people suffering from a mental health problem has two different systems.
AP1 (Applicant): There is a civil law system, the so-called forced admission, laid down in the law of 26 June 1990, concerning the protection of the mentally ill person.
AP1 (Applicant): This is a system that has two main pillars.
AP1 (Applicant): Firstly, the obligation placed on the clinics to admit anyone committed by the judge or the state prosecutor.
AP1 (Applicant): And secondly, the flexibility of the law, which places a lot of the decision-making directly in the hands of the psychiatrist treating the patient.
AP1 (Applicant): Then there is a second system, which is part of the Belgian criminal law.
AP1 (Applicant): This is the internment system, which was enshrined in the social defense law of July 1, 1964, until that law was replaced on the 1st of October 2016 by the internment law of 5 May 2014.
AP1 (Applicant): This system has a lot of problems, as your court has already seen in a veritable avalanche of procedures introduced in Strasbourg.
AP1 (Applicant): These procedures have eventually led to the pilot judgment of September 6, 2016, in the case WD against Belgium, where your court has concluded that the Belgian internment system is structurally dysfunctional and that the system itself is responsible for the constant and ongoing violations of the convention rights of the persons who are placed under an internment measure.
AP1 (Applicant): The basic differences between the internment system and the system of forced admission are, firstly, that the internment system can and does place people in prison until there is an institution willing to admit them.
AP1 (Applicant): There was, until recently, no obligation for any psychiatric institution in the Dutch-speaking part of the country to accept any of them.
AP1 (Applicant): This problem has been remedied slightly by the opening of two Dutch-speaking forensic psychiatric centers in Ghent and Antwerp in the last few years, which have, in theory, the obligation to accept any patient.
AP1 (Applicant): But these two centers are already operating at maximum capacity, while there are still hundreds of people waiting in prison for a placement in an appropriate institution.
AP1 (Applicant): There used to be an exceptional procedure in Article 14 of the Social Defense Law of 1964, where the competent internment tribunal under that law, the Social Defense Commission, could order the placement in a private psychiatric institution.
AP1 (Applicant): This provision was seldom used, and the occasional placement decision met with intense resistance of the psychiatric institutions concerned.
AP1 (Applicant): After intense lobbying from the private psychiatric sector, this exceptional procedure was abolished by the new internment law of 2014.
AP1 (Applicant): So there is, to this day, as your court has found in the pilot judgment, a bottleneck in the flow of a criminal law internment measure.
AP1 (Applicant): And this shortage of places leads to systematic human rights violations by keeping the persons concerned longer than a reasonable time in prison, a problem that is completely absent from the civil law forced admission.
AP1 (Applicant): This is a first fundamental difference between the two procedures.
AP1 (Applicant): Secondly, where the Social Defense Law was relatively flexible, with a hearing before the Social Defense Commission every six months, the new internment law states in Article 43 that the current competent tribunal, the Social Protection Chamber of the Tribunal for the Application of Sentences, can limit the hearings to once a year.
AP1 (Applicant): And this is exactly what happens in practice.
AP1 (Applicant): Theoretically, they can limit this waiting period, but that is only rarely done.
AP1 (Applicant): As we read in the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture of 8 March 2018, the government has replied in their public response of June 2018 to the CPT report that they found it not opportune to consider two hearings a year.
AP1 (Applicant): So we have the previous internment law that your court has found, after extensive consideration in a pilot judgment, to be structurally dysfunctional.
AP1 (Applicant): And we have a new internment law that has scrapped the exceptional placement procedure of the old law, and that has in practice resulted in psychiatric patients in prisons limited to one hearing a year.
AP1 (Applicant): Nevertheless, the Belgian government will try to sell this new law as a law that better guarantees the basic rights of the persons involved.
AP1 (Applicant): In my opinion, it takes a certain je ne sais quoi to take a structural dysfunctional law and replace it with a new law that offers even less protection to the people within its scope.
AP1 (Applicant): Nevertheless, even the old social defense law lacked the therapeutical flexibility of the forced admission system, with none of the autonomy for the psychiatrist treating the patient.
AP1 (Applicant): There was always a strict framework of conditions placed on the trial liberation by the Social Protection Commission, limiting what could be done by the patient and the institution.
AP1 (Applicant): This has not changed with the new internment law.
AP1 (Applicant): To conclude this point, there is a fundamental difference between the forced admission procedure and the internment procedure, with the latter being the much more strict and much more rigid, even when we take the structurally dysfunctional nature of the internment system out of the equation.
AP1 (Applicant): And this, in the name of a professed much greater need for the protection of society concerning the people who fall under the scope of the criminal law internment system.
AP1 (Applicant): Your court may note that there is no difference between the diagnosis of the people involved.
AP1 (Applicant): Both systems apply to the exact same psychiatric illnesses.
AP1 (Applicant): Furthermore, we must note that both systems are meant for people who pose a certain qualified risk to society.
AP1 (Applicant): A forced admission is limited by Article 2 of the law to people who meet the following condition, because he puts his health and safety in grave danger, or either because he forms a serious threat towards other people's life or integrity.
AP1 (Applicant): On the other hand, the conditions lay down in Article 9 of the internment law of 2014, which states that a person who has committed a crime or offense may pose a risk to society.
AP1 (Applicant): But as a consequence of the fundamental differences we have explained earlier, the internment system is a much more harsh system to be placed under.
AP1 (Applicant): Therefore, there is a general consensus it should only be used when the additional strictness of the internment system is in itself a necessity to protect society.
AP1 (Applicant): So in order to differentiate between the target population of the two laws in function to determine whether or not an internment measure with all that that comprises is necessary, there is a legal threshold.
AP1 (Applicant): The threshold in the old social defense law of 1964 was quite simply to have committed an offense punishable by more than seven days imprisonment.
AP1 (Applicant): It is quite obvious that this was an extremely feeble threshold.
AP1 (Applicant): One could, for example, be interned for spraying graffiti.
AP1 (Applicant): Minimum punishment is one month.
AP1 (Applicant): Or for the demolition of a fence, the minimum punishment is eight days.
AP1 (Applicant): This low threshold gave rise to cases where the full force of an internment measure was used for situations where this was objectively completely unnecessary.
AP1 (Applicant): The former justice minister has recognized in his proposal of law for the fundamental overhaul of the new internment law before it came into force that this was an improper use of the internment measure.
AP1 (Applicant): L'objectif est de se focaliser sur ces personnes pour lesquelles cette mesure de sûreté est véritablement nécessaire, dès le début, pour une durée indéterminée et desquelles la société et les victimes doivent être protégées.
AP1 (Applicant): Cela permet de contrer un usage impropre de la mesure d'internement.
AP1 (Applicant): This improper use is recognized in the abstract by the government in the brief they have filed in the case of Mr. Dennis and Mr. Irvine, while citing the words of the former justice
AP1 (Applicant): minister in the Justice Committee of the Chamber of Representatives.
AP1 (Applicant): L'introduction d'un seuil pour pouvoir procéder à l'internement afin de concentrer la mesure d'internement sur le groupe cible qui en a besoin et d'éviter qu'une mesure d'internement à durée indéterminée puisse être ordonnée pour des faits relativement mineurs.
AP1 (Applicant): This objective limiting the scope of the internment measure to a target group of people who really need it because of the specific offenses they committed is pretty clear.
AP1 (Applicant): In light of the O'Keeley judgment of your court, the Belgian legislature has decided that the threshold should be raised.
AP1 (Applicant): It is worth remarking that the facts for which Mr. O'Keeley had been placed under internment
AP1 (Applicant): measure, theft with violence, would still be within the scope of the new internment law of 2014 as they meet the threshold inscribed in the new law.
AP1 (Applicant): This is not the case for Mr. Dennis and Mr. Irvine.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Dennis stole a car from an acquaintance.
AP1 (Applicant): The car was recovered a week later.
AP1 (Applicant): These facts cannot give rise to an internment measure under the new law.
AP1 (Applicant): While this offense was committed in May 2005, the internment decision was handed down in June 2007, more than two years after the facts.
AP1 (Applicant): Furthermore, when we read the psychiatric expertise of Dr. Asma, piece one of the government,
AP1 (Applicant): we see clearly that Mr. Dennis was the subject of a forced admission two times between committing
AP1 (Applicant): the offense and the internment decision.
AP1 (Applicant): There was no need for an internment measure, the expertise stated clearly that he was in need of psychiatric therapy.
AP1 (Applicant): And in the conclusion of the report, the doctor clearly states it was even possible as an outpatient, but the forced admission was better.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Irvine on his part was apprehended by the police after he entered an uninhabited
AP1 (Applicant): squat by the basement and while leaving, smashing the window of the front door with a bar stool.
AP1 (Applicant): He left his shoes and his shirt before leaving the scene.
AP1 (Applicant): Neither of these offenses fall within the scope of the new internment law.
AP1 (Applicant): The question before your court today is therefore a relatively simple one.
AP1 (Applicant): Is it legal in the sense of the convention to keep a person under an internment measure when a situation does not meet the threshold of this regime of deprivation of liberty explicitly enshrined in the new law?
AP1 (Applicant): Neither Mr. Dennis nor Mr. Irvine fall in the target population of the internment law.
AP1 (Applicant): Neither Mr. Dennis nor Mr. Irvine have committed offenses that meet the threshold of the internment
AP1 (Applicant): law.
AP1 (Applicant): They both suffer from mental health issues that are dealt with each and every day in the alternative system of forced admission.
AP1 (Applicant): How can this not be arbitrary?
AP1 (Applicant): It falls upon the government to justify why they treat Mr. Dennis and Mr. Irvine completely
AP1 (Applicant): different than people who suffer from the same mental health issues as the applicants and who have committed the same offenses as the applicants.
AP1 (Applicant): Without proper justification, treating people in the same situation differently is a textbook definition of arbitrariness and that justification is lacking.
AP1 (Applicant): The reasons the government gives come down to this.
AP1 (Applicant): We have a definitive internment judgment and we kept them in the system because that is the most stable way of doing things.
AP1 (Applicant): Both arguments are in direct opposition of the basic principles your court has formulated in its jurisprudence concerning the detention of people suffering of mental illness.
AP1 (Applicant): In the case of Mr. Ukili, the ultimate finding of your court that the necessary link between
AP1 (Applicant): the goal of the detention and the conditions of the detentions was broken rested on two separate conclusions.
AP1 (Applicant): One that the incarceration in a prison instead of an institution that was adapted to his needs had broken this necessary link.
AP1 (Applicant): But there was a second consideration that cannot be waived away as superfluous as the government tries to do.
AP1 (Applicant): That offenses committed are minor and that Mr. Ukili seems not to present a real danger
AP1 (Applicant): to society.
AP1 (Applicant): In other words, that he does not meet a substantive threshold for an internment measure and that this means that the necessary link is simply not there.
AP1 (Applicant): This is in line with your court has held in other judgments.
AP1 (Applicant): For example, the decision in the grand chamber judgment in the case against Germany.
AP1 (Applicant): In order for the detention to be lawful and not arbitrary, the deprivation of liberty must be shown to have been necessary in the circumstances.
AP1 (Applicant): The detention of an individual is such a serious measure that it is only justified where other less severe measures have been considered and found to be insufficient to safeguard the individual or public interest.
AP1 (Applicant): This element of proportionality that the more serious measure is necessary because other less severe measures have been considered and found to be insufficient is a cornerstone of the protection against arbitrariness.
AP1 (Applicant): This element of proportionality is equally in play between two different systems of deprivation of liberty as in the cases of Mr. Dennis and Mr. Irvine.
AP1 (Applicant): The more serious detention measure can only be applied when the specific circumstances of the case meets the legal threshold of this measure.
AP1 (Applicant): And this, in our opinion, is an oversight in the section judgment.
AP1 (Applicant): There the principles of the winter where a judgment of your court are correct correctly applied.
AP1 (Applicant): But the decision is not if Mr. Dennis and Mr. Irvine meet the conditions to be deprived
AP1 (Applicant): of their liberty in the light of their mental illness.
AP1 (Applicant): This has never been contested.
AP1 (Applicant): The winter where the principles are general principles for each and every detention of a mentally ill person.
AP1 (Applicant): They can justify a basic detention in the form of a forced admission, but they do not justify as such a criminal law internment measure.
AP1 (Applicant): For a criminal law internment measure, the winter where the principles are necessary but not sufficient.
AP1 (Applicant): This much stricter system needs additionally to meet other much stricter criteria that are found in the jurisprudence of your court to be considered legal under the convention.
AP1 (Applicant): As your court stated in the Simons against Belgium judgment, the general principles implied by the convention to which the Article 5, paragraph 1 case law refers are the principle of the rule of law and connecting to the latter that of legal certainty, the principle of proportionality, and the principle of protection against arbitrariness, which is moreover the very aim of Article 5.
AP1 (Applicant): So we derive from the case law of your court that the element of proportionality is an equal part of the consideration of the necessity for an internment measure to be legal under the convention.
AP1 (Applicant): And so the two side by side holdings of the O'Keeley judgment, the inappropriate conditions of his detention on one side and the disproportionality of the internment measure on the other side are two equally important elements to determine whether or not there is arbitrariness.
AP1 (Applicant): Your court has indicated that arbitrariness may arise where there was no connection between the ground of permitted deprivation of liberty relied on and the place and conditions of detention and where there was no relationship of proportionality between the ground of detention relied on and the detention in question.
AP1 (Applicant): There is, in our opinion, no connection between the conditions of their detention and the facts of their case as required.
AP1 (Applicant): There is no proportionality between the reason of their detention and the detention in question.
AP1 (Applicant): The argument, a definitive judgment does not, as the Belgian government argues, overrule the substantive criteria that your court has set forth.
AP1 (Applicant): Article 5, paragraph 1.e of the convention is by definition a field where all decisions
AP1 (Applicant): are to be held time and again against the light to verify that further detention is warranted and all the substantive criteria are met.
AP1 (Applicant): Neither is a government desire for maximum stability a sufficient reason to put aside the fundamental right of its citizens to the maximum degree of freedom that is possible considering their mental illness.
AP1 (Applicant): Every further degree of restriction of the right to freedom must be necessary and proportional.
AP1 (Applicant): As we examine the daily practice in Belgium, where people with the exact same mental health issues as Mr. Denes and Mr. Irvine and who have committed the same minor offenses as
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Denes and Mr. Irvine are dealt with without any problems under the civil forced admission