TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
GR1 (Government): And in the case of another state, when the parliamentary inquiry reached different conclusions on possible existence of secret facilities, they suggested, and other authorities combined their suggestions with the parliamentary one, suggested the initiation of a criminal investigation.
GR1 (Government): As far as the status of the applicant in Romanian law is concerned, there is no such thing as formal victim status position that would be recognized after following a procedure in criminal law in Romania.
GR1 (Government): By filing a criminal complaint, the author of that criminal complaint declares himself as an injured party.
GR1 (Government): The commencement of criminal investigation is not an authorization of the victim status.
GR1 (Government): Actually, under criminal procedural law, the prosecutor is to commence a criminal investigation in all cases except if some instances that would not allow for a criminal inquiry to take place are not met.
GR1 (Government): As far as the news article in the Spiegel is concerned and the way that article quotes from the former director of external intelligence service, as you can see from the document that we adduce to the file, that information was also verified in the context of the criminal investigation.
GR1 (Government): And in that context of the criminal investigation, it appeared quite clearly that the way that Spiegel used not only Mr. Talpes's statements,
GR1 (Government): but also another high official statement was misleading.
GR1 (Government): The statement referred to the normal level of cooperation between Romania and US, including at the level of intelligence agencies.
GR1 (Government): They confirmed that a location was provided as residence, as headquarters, for CIA in Romania for representation purposes, as usually done in NATO member states.
GR1 (Government): I would kindly and respectfully draw your attention to the fact that in two different occasions, Mr. Talpes
GR1 (Government): clarified what he actually meant by his statements that were rephrased and misinterpreted by the news agency.
GR1 (Government): So as far as the incident in December 2004 is concerned, following the accident that took place in the airport, an investigation, a technical investigation, was initiated.
GR1 (Government): The chief inspector, after an in-situ inquiry, concluded on the causes of the accident.
GR1 (Government): And the report is publicly available on the internet.
GR1 (Government): The report stated that the passengers were disembarked using the doors of the aircraft, and that as there was the risk of a fire burning out, as large amounts of fuel were leaking from the aircraft, they were obviously and normally taken away from the airplane.
GR1 (Government): The passengers did not vanish.
GR1 (Government): And I would recall you that yesterday, expert number one confirmed that he was provided the list of the passengers.
GR1 (Government): The list of the passengers was taken from Romanian authorities.
GR1 (Government): And the only way you could have the list of the passengers is if they passed through normal border controls.
GR1 (Government): They were later taken to a hotel, and then they left the country.
GR1 (Government): There was no vanished person during that incident.
GR1 (Government): The US Senate report of 2014 is definitely a valuable source of information.
GR1 (Government): And it's value rests, among others, on the fact that it is an official release by US authorities.
GR1 (Government): However, and I will refer that to the question with reference to the concept of sovereignty used in US Senate report, I consider, and I would not dare to speculate further on that, that the use of sovereignty in that report and in general is a different concept from that of responsibility.
GR1 (Government): And I would not know what the US authorities meant by saying that they respected the sovereignty of states concerned, but that could range from respecting the airspace of the states they transited and would not imply by that the fact that they searched the informed cooperation of other states with respect to running secret detention facilities.
GR1 (Government): As far as the treatment, Mr. Anaschiri
GR1 (Government): was subjected to a while in a secret detention in Romania.
GR1 (Government): If we assume that such a secret detention existed, and if we assume that we can draw the conclusions that the black country indicated in US Senate report that took the care to redact part of its findings is Romania, as the applicants' representatives contend, I would remind you that expert number three yesterday confirmed that while in Romania, Mr. Anaschiri
GR1 (Government): was not subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques and that actually the pattern of the program, the expert said, was that the enhanced interrogation techniques were used only at the beginning of the detention of a HVD.
GR1 (Government): Thank you very much for your attention, Madam President.
AP2 (Applicant): My colleague will begin.
AP1 (Applicant): Madam President, I will start this time with a short rebuttal mostly on what the government has said and also a few other comments, also having some of the questions, and then my colleague will go further on the merits.
AP1 (Applicant): The government has raised the issue of non-exhaustion of actually several objections. One would be the fact that this application was filed too late, another one being that actually we have not exhausted domestic remedies.
AP1 (Applicant): And one thing that was mentioned was that we have not explained why we have waited for some public admission or indication on whether, on where the black site in Romania was located in order to file a criminal complaint and then actually go also to the, before the court.
AP1 (Applicant): Well, there is a very simple explanation why we have waited for such an indication to become publicly known. We expected the sort of attitude that the domestic authorities actually had, the blunt denial and the requirement on us to provide as many information as possible.
AP1 (Applicant): As you could see from the case file, even all the information we provided was not considered enough by the prosecutor to make, to go into further examination of the evidence we proposed.
AP1 (Applicant): So we consider that we need as many elements of fact as possible in order to file both the criminal complaint and afterwards the complaint before the European Court of Human Rights.
AP1 (Applicant): On the other hand, also we expected that there would be no effective investigation given the attitude of the authorities so far.
AP1 (Applicant): So we have tried to put up a case as strong as possible on one hand, and on the other hand, afraid that we might be considered as outside time by the court, also filed the application before the court.
AP1 (Applicant): We were considered not serious, let's say, in our efforts because we have not waited for the domestic authorities to act.
AP1 (Applicant): But look, we were right in our assumptions that we are four years later and no serious investigation ever took place.
AP1 (Applicant): The government also pointed out to various inconsistencies in the facts presented by us, including regarding the location and so on.
AP1 (Applicant): It is our interpretation that if there is anyone's fault for the inconsistency, that is on the government, because they were under the obligation to investigate the allegations and to make findings in respect of all these details of fact.
AP1 (Applicant): So it was too much to put the whole burden on us to provide very, very, very consistent and clear details beyond what is required under Article III of the Convention for an Applicant, and only that to trigger an effective investigation.
AP1 (Applicant): I think that the facts and the attitudes of the authorities in this case is that if the burden of proof completely reversed, it's like the government is a defendant, like in the regular procedure, and the applicant, and I'm talking about the domestic investigation here, not the court procedure.
AP1 (Applicant): The applicant is the one who has to provide all the evidence, and the authorities, may it be the Senate, may it be the prosecutor, just rebut everything.
AP1 (Applicant): It's not enough.
AP1 (Applicant): You have not proven anything.
AP1 (Applicant): No, the authorities in Romania do not have a right to remain silent, and there is no obligation on the applicant to prove their guilt.
AP1 (Applicant): It's their obligation to conduct an effective investigation.
AP1 (Applicant): Also, the government made some consideration about our lack of participation to the domestic procedures, and I also make a bit of comment regarding your question about the status of the judge's plan or about the status of the applicant in the domestic procedures.
AP1 (Applicant): In the case of the judge, he filed a criminal complaint in which also he mentioned he wants remedies.
AP1 (Applicant): So he asked for the status of a civil — not of an injured party alone, but of a civil party.
AP1 (Applicant): So that came into force on 1 February 2014, which made the prosecutor to start in rem criminal investigation.
AP1 (Applicant): But on the other hand, based on the new provisions of criminal procedure, there should have been an act on informing the applicant on its rights.
AP1 (Applicant): That was never — that never happened.
AP1 (Applicant): And as you see, not even the government admits that he has the same status that he would have throughout the procedure since the very beginning, that is of an injured party, but also of a civil party.
AP1 (Applicant): The civil procedure code does provide — the new one does provide for certain rights, and it is the law and the practice in Romania that after the prosecutor opens the criminal investigation, to inform the civil party and the injured party at the same time of his or her rights.
AP1 (Applicant): Something like that never happened in the present case.
AP1 (Applicant): And as a last comment I would like to make about the Senate investigation that is presented here as an effective investigation for the purposes of Article 3 and that there was no need for an ex officio investigation to be started by the prosecution.
AP1 (Applicant): The Senate report has a very, very strong conclusions as that nothing happened here.
AP1 (Applicant): As I said, for the prosecutor, even after the applicant filed a criminal complaint, that strong denial was very important in considering that there is no case to investigate, as in the letter addressed to the government agent.
AP1 (Applicant): But nevertheless, no one looked in detail of how the report was made and what it was based on.
AP1 (Applicant): The annexes to the report were never made public.
AP1 (Applicant): Never, ever.
AP1 (Applicant): It results that some were declassified in 2013 from the documents the government sent during — I mean, since the last months in this procedure.
AP1 (Applicant): But publicly they were never made public.
AP1 (Applicant): So there was no ground whatsoever to correlate the very, very strong denial containing the findings with some sort of basis.
AP1 (Applicant): Given the fact that there are also all these contradicting international reports on the market, so why would someone in good faith would take for granted this very strong conclusion without any other indication?
AP1 (Applicant): Even the fact that, although there were public statements that the documents should be declassified, they were never declassified, were not taken into consideration by the prosecutor.
AP1 (Applicant): And also, it has to be noted that these documents do not prove, like this 11 annexes that were almost lost until now, do not prove much of the effectiveness of the investigation.
AP1 (Applicant): Again, there are thousands of flight logs that have nothing to do with our issue.
AP1 (Applicant): It's about overflying authorization from the Ministry of Defense, which obviously doesn't result that anyone took into consideration those thousands of pages in any way.
AP1 (Applicant): Actually, the Senate only requested a three-page summary in order to assess it.
AP1 (Applicant): It also has to be noted that when the Senate, after releasing the report, was actually asked in a Freedom of Information request that is also in the file, what was the purpose?
AP1 (Applicant): Why did these planes actually land in Romania?
AP1 (Applicant): Okay, we understand.
AP1 (Applicant): You say there was no involvement of Romania into the program, but you investigated it.
AP1 (Applicant): Why did they come here?
AP1 (Applicant): Okay, they didn't carry detainees, but why they were here?
AP1 (Applicant): The official answer of the Senate was that was not the purpose of the investigation committee.
Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (JudgeP): I call Miss Singh.
Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (JudgeP): The floor is yours, madam.
AP2 (Applicant): If I may answer the questions raised by the judges.
AP2 (Applicant): With respect to Judge Spanos' question as to what we consider to be proven with respect to enhanced interrogation techniques, it is the applicant's position that in light of the extreme secrecy associated with the program, that we cannot rule out the possibility that he might have been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques.
AP2 (Applicant): This said, the finding by the court that the totality of circumstances that the applicant was subjected to clearly amounted to torture and treatment in violation of Article III, we submit, is entirely warranted by the evidence in this case.
AP2 (Applicant): And in support, I would draw the court's attention to 18 months of incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance to which the applicant was subjected, the evidence of rectal feeding, which the Senate report said was applied without medical necessity and as used as a method of behavior control, the conditions of confinement that are documented in a number of documents that were recognized by the court in Al-Nashri versus Poland, including the document signed by George Tenet and another from the CIA relating to Rizzo's office, John Rizzo's office.
AP2 (Applicant): And these conditions of confinement included continued subjection to bright lights, continued subjection to loud noise, shackling, blindfolding, hooding, force shaving.
AP2 (Applicant): And in fact, as expert three categorically said in yesterday's fact-finding hearing that drugging and beating were also such kinds of sort of routine elements of the treatment to which prisoners were subjected along with the conditions of confinement documented in numerous official US government documents.
AP2 (Applicant): Then also, as I mentioned in my opening statement, the court in Abu Zubaydah versus Poland recognized that the mere fact of secret detention combined with the uncertainty of being detained at the hands of the CIA itself inflicted intense mental suffering on the applicant, another element of the treatment and violation of Article III that the applicant was subjected to.
AP2 (Applicant): And then finally, the personal characteristics of the victim are also relevant for determining the standard of ill treatment that he was subjected to.
AP2 (Applicant): And I'll draw the court's attention to numerous documents in the record that demonstrate that the applicant was psychologically utterly broken as a result of the CIA detention program, including the transcript testimony of Sandra Crosby, who said that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and also, in fact, numerous passages from the Senate report itself, the US Senate report itself, that document the severe psychological breakdown to which the applicant was subjected.
AP2 (Applicant): With respect to Judge Stratianu's question, the expert testimony of expert number three yesterday indicated that the applicant was likely taken to Lithuania after his detention in Romania.
AP2 (Applicant): But in relation to your question as to whether that aggravated the legal position of the applicant, the answer is most certainly yes, because he remained in continued CIA secret detention.
AP2 (Applicant): And so for all of the reasons that the court found that there were violations of the convention by Poland in permitting the detainees transfer from Polish territory into further secret detention in CIA custody, the same logic applies with respect to Romania, because he was not suddenly free and being subjected to criminal process in Lithuania, or indeed any other country.
AP2 (Applicant): He was subjected to the CIA secret detention program.
AP2 (Applicant): And I just draw the court's attention to the fact that certainly that risk, Romania was on notice of that risk of continued secret detention, continued ill treatment, the possibility of an unfair trial by military commission that's all clearly set out in our application, the military commission's order number one that was issued in 2001, and the death penalty.
AP2 (Applicant): All of that, the Romanian government was on notice of as of the time of transfer, which we heard yesterday occurred in 2005.
AP2 (Applicant): And so certainly that is, according to the court's caseload, that is the point of time that you should consider for determining that the country was on notice that transfer was taking place in the face of these real risks of further ill treatment, death penalty, fragrantly unfair trial, secret detention.
AP2 (Applicant): But the court has also found that it is entitled to take into account post-transfer facts.
AP2 (Applicant): And again, I would point, I would respectfully submit that the evidence in this record is replete with information that demonstrates that the real risks that existed as of the point of transfer from Romanian territory continued and in fact manifested while he was held in Lithuania and indeed while he's held in Guantanamo Bay.
AP2 (Applicant): And then finally, I would just submit that in, it is perplexing that the government continues to believe that there is not sufficient evidence to demonstrate that there was a secret CIA prison on Romanian territory.
AP2 (Applicant): We have heard exhaustive testimony yesterday from the expert witnesses.
AP2 (Applicant): We have the Senate report.
AP2 (Applicant): We have numerous documents appended to the application and the written submissions of the applicants.
AP2 (Applicant): And we have very specific accounts from expert number three that he actually spoke with individuals who had firsthand knowledge of these dummy flight plans that were concocted with the cooperation of the Romanian government.
AP2 (Applicant): So I would respectfully submit there's ample evidence in the record to find for the applicant.
Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (JudgeP): Thank you, Ms. Singh.
Mirjana Lazarova Trajkovska (JudgeP): We have now come to an end of the hearing.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Je déclare ouverte l'audience publique sur le fonds de l'affaire Regner contre la République tchèque.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): L'affaire a été introduite devant la Cour le 25 mai 2011 par le ressortissant tchèque M. Václav Regner
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Elle a été attribuée à la 5e section de la Cour conformément à l'article 52, paragraphe 1 du règlement de la Cour.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): La requête a été communiquée au gouvernement le 6 janvier 2014.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Le 26 novembre 2015, une chambre de la 5e section a rendu un arrêt par lequel elle a déclaré la requête recevable et a conclu à la non-violation de l'article 6, paragraphe 1 de la Convention.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Le 22 février 2016, le requérant a demandé le renvoi de l'affaire devant la Grande Chambre conformément à l'article 43 de la Convention.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Et cette demande a été acceptée par le collège de la Grande Chambre le 2 mai 2016.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Le 14 juin 2016, le gouvernement slovak a été autorisé à soumettre des observations écrites en tant que 3e parti en vertu de l'article 44, paragraphe 3 du règlement de la Cour.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Le gouvernement est représenté par son agent, M. Vít Alexander Schorm, assisté de M. Vladimír Pysk,
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): du bureau de l'agent du gouvernement, de Mme Lenka Zahradnická, conseillère auprès de l'Autorité de sécurité nationale, et de Mme Helena Bončková, conseillère auprès de la Cour administrative suprême.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Le requérant est représenté par M. Marek Bilej,
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Dominika Káňová et Anna Kukrálová, avocats à Prague.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): A la demande de la partie requérante, celle-ci a été autorisée à s'exprimer en langue tchèque à l'audience.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Je salue également le groupe de magistrats de juridiction du ressort de la Cour d'appel de Colmar, ainsi que les groupes de juges turcs et azerbaïdjanais en visite d'études à la Cour.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Ayant consulté l'agent du gouvernement et le représentant du récréant, j'ai fixé ainsi l'ordre de parole.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Nous entendrons successivement M. Bilej pour le requérant
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): et puis M. Schorm pour le gouvernement.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Je dois expliquer qu'en sus de l'interprétation dans les deux langues officielles de la Cour, l'anglais et le français, l'interprétation en turc et en azerbaïdjanais a été autorisée au profit des délégations des juges turcs et azerbaïdjanais qui assistent à cette audience.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): La parole est à M. Bilej.
AP1 (Applicant): Dear Mr. President, honorable judges,
AP1 (Applicant): we are aware of the complexity and sensitivity of the case heard, but we would like to start with a simple example.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Smith, a holder of a certificate
AP1 (Applicant): for dealing with classified information and an employee of a ministry in an office that requires a security clearance, regularly walks his dog in a park.
AP1 (Applicant): He starts to meet a person, B, who also walks his dog.
AP1 (Applicant): At first, they don't talk to each other.
AP1 (Applicant): They do not greet each other.
AP1 (Applicant): Then, after some time, they start to greet each other and complain about the weather and exchange information on their pets.
AP1 (Applicant): They do not know each other's name, and they do not know where the other lives, what the other does.
AP1 (Applicant): The usual thing, we guess.
AP1 (Applicant): This could be the end of our example, but it continues.
AP1 (Applicant): Subsequently, the certificate for dealing with classified information is withdrawn from Mr. Smith
AP1 (Applicant): without the security authority stating reasons for the withdrawal.
AP1 (Applicant): After many years spent as a public servant, Mr. Smith loses eligibility
AP1 (Applicant): to perform his office at the ministry, and of course, this also significantly affects his further professional and private life.
AP1 (Applicant): If you ask whether walking dogs relates to the withdrawal of the security certificate, we do.
AP1 (Applicant): We feel it does.
AP1 (Applicant): According to the findings of the intelligence services, person B, who Mr. Smith was meeting,
AP1 (Applicant): represents a security risk to the state.
AP1 (Applicant): The security certificate was withdrawn from Mr. Smith
AP1 (Applicant): for the reason of having contact with person B.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Smith is not informed of the reasons
AP1 (Applicant): for the withdrawal of the certificate based on a reference to the need of protecting national security.
AP1 (Applicant): The life of Mr. Smith is fundamentally changed
AP1 (Applicant): due to the withdrawal of the certificate.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Smith would like to describe his contacts with person B
AP1 (Applicant): to the security authority, but he could not.
AP1 (Applicant): He could not because he did not know that reasons for the withdrawal of the certificate are based on contacts with person B.
AP1 (Applicant): Mr. Smith searches to no avail
AP1 (Applicant): to find how he could have compromised the security interest of the state, and he does not know that the reason he lost an important job in the administration is, in fact, walking a dog.
AP1 (Applicant): We would like to use this story in the following minutes.
AP1 (Applicant): The story is linked with following questions.