TrustHLT/LaCour huggingface dataset:
GR1 (Government): So in the end it will be an assessment of the police whether or not a person can be preventively detained, and then of course that assessment will be followed by our Danish courts deciding on whether or not this assessment was in accordance with our national and international obligations.
GR1 (Government): I think the case in front of the court is a very interesting example of how that type of assessment will play out and how that will be dealt with in our national courts subsequently.
GR1 (Government): So I think that's our answer to that question.
GR1 (Government): As to the question of judicial control, what can we, what would be the best way to proceed with this if we were in a situation where both subparagraph B and C were in place?
GR1 (Government): I think we are in a situation where these preventive detentions, short-term detentions take place in a situation where a lot of things are happening at the same time, I think quite often most of the times it would simply not be realistic to put people before a court before they are actually released.
GR1 (Government): These detentions are short-term, we have a specific situation here of a seven and a half hour detention, but most of the detentions would probably be of a much shorter character so it probably wouldn't be feasible to put persons in front of a court before they are released and I don't think it would be for the benefit of the persons having been detained they want to be released as soon as possible.
GR1 (Government): But then of course the question of arbitrariness and how can they then complain?
GR1 (Government): Well I think the way we have set up the system in Denmark is a well-functioning system.
GR1 (Government): According to the procedure rules in the Danish Administration of Justice Act, they stipulate that a person can request a judicial review of the lawfulness of his or her detention and then the authorities have five days to bring a case before the national court.
GR1 (Government): Of course this could be made automatic but I think it's in the interest of the person themselves whether or not they want to try the detention that they have been exposed to.
GR1 (Government): I think maybe for the benefit of the persons detained, automaticity is not necessarily the best way ahead.
GR1 (Government): I think it would be not necessarily in the interest of the authorities or the applicants but everyone that has been detained has the right to have a court proceedings.
GR1 (Government): And I think, I hope that at least gives some input to answering the question by Judge Slemmet.
GR1 (Government): The third question was from Judge Lidoff.
GR1 (Government): And here, also a very good question on the factual situation.
GR1 (Government): Basically going to the question of how can the police assess that there is no risk when the applicants have been released immediately after the last disturbance took place in Copenhagen?
GR1 (Government): How can they make such a fast assessment?
GR1 (Government): What is it based on?
GR1 (Government): I think this is in effect a very concrete assessment by the police authorities in a specific case.
GR1 (Government): In this situation we had more than 180, 186 police officers involved in the operations on top of the already existing police operating in the city at the time.
GR1 (Government): There was a fairly good understanding of what happened in the different parts of the city.
GR1 (Government): You had a control center man with 10 to 15 persons constantly evaluating how the situation in the city developed.
GR1 (Government): And I think it's fair to say that the answer to the question asked by Judge Lidoff is, well the understanding of the authorities at the time was that the last disturbances that took place, the last fight that happened in the city center, probably was also the last unrest of the evening.
GR1 (Government): So that was a very concrete assessment by the police.
GR1 (Government): And obviously when you have a six hour rule as a starting point and you have detainees who are in your detention facilities for more than seven hours, you want to release them as soon as possible.
GR1 (Government): So it's a balance.
GR1 (Government): We came to the conclusion that after the last fight, then the city would, peace and quiet, would settle on the city and that was actually what happened.
GR1 (Government): And therefore authorities came to the conclusion that the applicants could be released.
GR1 (Government): On the second question by Judge Lidoff relating specifically to subparagraph C, basically which concrete measures or circumstances existed so, or did we assess in order to assess whether or not there was an imminent risk, I think as we have stated in our written observations and also today at the oral hearing, this was a number of elements were part of this assessment.
GR1 (Government): Obviously you had the overall framework of a city with a number of, unusual high number of persons in the city because of the football match and then you had the specific fights that started already at 3.40 in the afternoon.
GR1 (Government): You had the specific behavior of the applicants.
GR1 (Government): You had the police observations of the organizing of the situation, who they gave orders to and we had the specific situation of a witness coming to the police explaining that he had just overheard one of the applicants inciting others over his phone to initiate fights interiorly in the main family relaxation spot in the city of Copenhagen to initiate fights in that location.
GR1 (Government): So it's a number of different elements that played into the concrete assessment of whether an imminent risk existed.
GR1 (Government): And as the court has stated in its case law, the police must be afforded a degree of discretion in taking these operational decisions, primarily because the police are usually in the best position to make them.
GR1 (Government): And as Trude also underlined that this was an assessment that has been evaluated by two instances in Denmark and simply been accepted as facts by our national courts that all these different elements together made a situation where the best way ahead or the next step for the police would be to detain these specific persons in question.
GR1 (Government): A question which was raised by both Judge Nusberger and Judge Razzoni was to the history of the applicants in the specific situation.
GR1 (Government): And the referral by us and the applicants that they had a known history for participating in these sorts of hooligan fights, they were known troublemakers.
GR1 (Government): First of all, I should say this is the case and here we base ourselves on the documents from the District Court of Aarhus which has also been sent to the court which basically outlines that here one of the applicants had been detained several times previously in connection with similar events.
GR1 (Government): Today we don't have specifics on these previous events.
GR1 (Government): So we cannot give the court today further information on specifically what had happened in previous events.
GR1 (Government): I can inform you that yes, we do have a hooligan register in Denmark.
GR1 (Government): We haven't brought it with us.
GR1 (Government): I'm not sure whether or not the applicants are registered in this hooligan register.
GR1 (Government): I would presume so based on what we've heard from our district courts.
GR1 (Government): But again, this is and should be a very, very minor element in the assessment made by the authorities.
GR1 (Government): And as we've said several times and stated also here today, it's not the history of these persons, it's the way they behaved on the day of the detention.
GR1 (Government): So obviously we have police present that knows these people.
GR1 (Government): Police that has been brought in from different regions of Denmark because they have a known relationship to these or they know these different actors in the hooligan communities.
GR1 (Government): So I think with the good advice of the President, I will now conclude my intervention.
GR1 (Government): And I will just invite the court to hold for each applicant and for the reasons put forward by the Government of Denmark that Article 5 of the Convention was not violated.
GR1 (Government): Thank you very much for your patience.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Now, please, Mr. Bonnez.
AP1 (Applicant): And Mr. President and distinguished members of the court,
AP1 (Applicant): I have a few replies to the comments given by the respondent's state in the first place.
AP1 (Applicant): It was mentioned, it was suggested, that Copenhagen was made into a battlefield on the day in question.
AP1 (Applicant): And perhaps that might very well have been the case.
AP1 (Applicant): But it's also important in this case to be aware of the fact that our clients, that the three applicants, at the time of their arrests or the time of their apprehension, they were nowhere near any fights.
AP1 (Applicant): They were not involved in fights.
AP1 (Applicant): They had just left a pub where the police said, according to the police, according to what the police told the Danish courts, there was a quiet atmosphere.
AP1 (Applicant): They had had a good time in the pub.
AP1 (Applicant): And they had just left that pub and walked down the pedestrian street and were approaching a place where there had been fights sometime before they arrived.
AP1 (Applicant): It's obvious in the applicant's view, where we compare to the German decision, the Ostendorff case, that our applicants, the two applicants, could have been asked to turn around.
AP1 (Applicant): Well, they did.
AP1 (Applicant): They did ask them to turn around.
AP1 (Applicant): Not to give them the possibility to walk back to the pub, for example, or to walk back to some other place where there were no unrest, but to get into a side street where they could arrest them.
AP1 (Applicant): That, in our opinion, is not fair.
AP1 (Applicant): They had not committed any wrongdoing, according to the police, at any time during the day.
AP1 (Applicant): And I also noticed that the respondent state mentioned a specific behavior carried out by our applicants.
AP1 (Applicant): I still need to hear which specific behavior we are talking about, apart from the behavior already mentioned by the police, that they sat in a pub and behaved in a proper way, apparently shouting out some orders, one of them.
AP1 (Applicant): We haven't heard anything about the contents of those orders.
AP1 (Applicant): They might have ordered beer.
AP1 (Applicant): We don't know what these orders were about.
AP1 (Applicant): And we also hear that, yeah, but what I think is also the situation, the applicant who was on this mobile phone talking to someone, I find that's a bit dubious, actually.
AP1 (Applicant): It's a bit dodgy that the police did not actually, when a person was talking on mobile phone, if that was the case, he's talking on a phone.
AP1 (Applicant): We heard from a person, from a citizen, from a passerby, that this guy was on the phone speaking to someone, apparently organizing riots.
AP1 (Applicant): Why did the police seize that phone, watch out exactly what the Germans did?
AP1 (Applicant): They saw that Mr. Ostendorf, they
AP1 (Applicant): could see on the display on his phone that he had been in touch with some guys from the other group.
AP1 (Applicant): Why didn't the Danish police seize that phone and do the very same?
AP1 (Applicant): That might be a way to prevent further disturbances, because they would actually be able to investigate into whether something was going to happen.
AP1 (Applicant): In my opinion, it seems to be quite dubious what did actually happen.
AP1 (Applicant): They just arrested them.
AP1 (Applicant): It seems to be quite a lackadaisical way to handle the freedom of other people, the personal liberty of other people.
AP1 (Applicant): And also, I have got the same sort of comments when it comes to this hooligan register.
AP1 (Applicant): The police, they have not produced any evidence that our clients, they have been organized in hooligan brawls before.
AP1 (Applicant): We have heard that they have been arrested, but not how many times or for what reasons.
AP1 (Applicant): So I think the court should be very careful when you look into the statements produced by the government in this case.
AP1 (Applicant): I have very few answers to what the court asked about.
AP1 (Applicant): Also, to question number one, I would just like to put forward the fact that, in our opinion, the German government in the Ostendorff case behaved in a very appropriate manner by finding out what can we do to avoid arresting people, to avoid using preventive detention.
AP1 (Applicant): And they did try out various options, but this person, Mr. Ostendorff, didn't respond in a proper way.
AP1 (Applicant): He did hide in that toilet and apparently had plans to initiate fights with other hooligans.
AP1 (Applicant): So there was a good reason to arrest that person, in the applicant's opinion.
AP1 (Applicant): But in our case, there was in no way a heated atmosphere.
AP1 (Applicant): The police had plenty of time, in our opinion, to talk to these persons in question here, tell them to go somewhere else, tell them to go back to Aarhus.
AP1 (Applicant): Or in particular, when we hear that they've just left that pub and the police knew that there was unrest in other parts of the city involving hooligans, why didn't the police just tell them, stay back in this pub?
AP1 (Applicant): Or we might, they mentioned the fact that the pub was too small for the number of people.
AP1 (Applicant): OK, though, stay back in this pub and we will organize.
AP1 (Applicant): We will help you or we will guide you to another pub, a larger pub, perhaps.
AP1 (Applicant): That seems it's not even discussed why these options were not carried out in this case.
AP1 (Applicant): Another thing that I can't get around my head, why didn't they thought of things like putting them on a bus and sending them back to Aarhus?
AP1 (Applicant): That might also have been an option, which has been less of an encroachment of their human rights than actually putting them in jail or depriving them of their liberty.
AP1 (Applicant): Yeah, I have no more replies.
AP1 (Applicant): Thanks for your attention.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Very much, Mr. Bonnez.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I thank the parties for their submissions and answers to court's questions.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I declare open the public hearing on the merits in the case of Güzelyurtlu and others versus Cyprus and Turkey.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The application was lodged with the court on 16 August 2007 under Article 34 of the Convention by Mr. Mehmet Güzelyurtlu, Mrs. Aysa Güzelyurtlu, Mrs. Deniz Erdinç, Mrs. Emin Akerson, Mrs. Fezil Kiralar, Mrs. Meghem Osfirat, and Mr. Muzaffer Osfirat, Cypriot nationals of Turkish-Cypriot origin.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The application was allocated to the third section of the court pursuant to Rule 52, Paragraph 1 of the rules of the court.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The application was communicated to the government on 13 May 2009.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): On 3 September 2009, the president of the third section granted leave to the Air Center to submit written comments as a third party by virtue of Rule 44, Paragraph 3 of the rules of the court.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): On 4 April 2017, a chamber of the third section delivered its judgment in the case.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): It unanimously declared the application admissible.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): It held by five votes to two that there has been a violation of Article 2 of the Convention in its procedural limb by Cyprus and unanimously that there has been a violation of Article 2 in its procedural limb by Turkey.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): On 22 June 2017, both respondent governments requested that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber in accordance with Article 43 of the Convention.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): And the panel of the Grand Chamber accepted their requests on 18 September 2017.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The Cypriot government are represented by their agent, Mr. Costas Clerides, Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus, assisted by Mrs. Clare Montgomery, counsel, Mrs. Jessica Jones, and by Mrs. Theodora Christodoulidou,advisor.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The Turkish government are represented by Mr. Erdoğan İşcan, ambassador, assisted by Mr. Stefan Talmon, counsel, by Mr.Zaim M. Necatigil Mrs. Sülen Karabacak, Mr. Ali Murat Başçeri, Mr. Can Öztaş, Mrs. Növber Ferit Vechi, Mrs. Deniz Kalyoncu, Mrs.  Billur Bilen  Soydan, and by Mrs. Meltem Aksen, advisors.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): The applicants are represented by Mr. Alper Riza, counsel, assisted by Mr. Christopher Pascalides, advisor. Three of the applicants are also present.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I also welcome the following groups of judges who are on a study visit to the court.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): A delegation of judges and prosecutors of the European Judicial Training Network, a delegation of Russian judges, and a delegation of Turkish judges and prosecutors.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Having consulted the representatives of both governments and of the applicants, I have determined the order of addresses as follows.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): Mr. Riza for the applicants will speak first,
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): and then Mrs. Montgomery for the Cypriot government,
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): and finally Mr. Talmon for the Turkish government.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I would explain that in addition to interpretation in the two official languages of the court, English and French, interpretation into Turkish, Russian, and Armenian has been authorized.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): That interpretation is not arranged by the court, and no transcription of the oral translation will be included in the official record of the proceedings.
Guido Raimondi (JudgeP): I call Mr. Riza.
AP1 (Applicant): May it please the court.
AP1 (Applicant): Thank you very much for the welcome, Mr. President.
AP1 (Applicant): As I have time constraints, I shall identify the issues in the case very briefly as follows.
AP1 (Applicant): Basically, this case is to do with the failure of putting it neutrally, the parties, to cooperate in the investigation of a murder in Cyprus, the Republic of Cyprus, under the effective control of the Republic of Cyprus.
AP1 (Applicant): And the murder was of three members of a family, including a child aged 16, a young girl who was shot point blank.
AP1 (Applicant): The issue, as the court below decided, was actually a very simple case.
AP1 (Applicant): I know it raises, from the papers, it raises apparently all sorts of issues of human rights and indeed international law.
AP1 (Applicant): But in our submission, this case is to do with nothing more than the failure of policemen to cooperate in order to detect, prosecute, and punish murderers.
AP1 (Applicant): That's as much as I'd like to say about the broad facts.
AP1 (Applicant): But it is important for the court to appreciate the narrow issue involves the issue, the factual issue.
AP1 (Applicant): Now, having said that, I move at once to the law.
AP1 (Applicant): I don't really want to preach to you, this court, this august court, about what the European Convention is all about and all the rest of it, because you know it infinitely better than I do.
AP1 (Applicant): And consequently, what I want to do is go straight to the point and go to Article 15.2 of the Convention.
AP1 (Applicant): Because in my submission, Article 15.2
AP1 (Applicant): of the Convention, which is the article that deals with derogations from obligations, including the right to life, including the procedural aspect.
AP1 (Applicant): But that is at the heart of this case, because of the nature of the case that has been put forward, in particular, by the Republic of Cyprus.
AP1 (Applicant): Under this article, it is not permissible to derogate from the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture, the right not to be enslaved, and the right not to be punished for an offense which was not an offense at the time of alleged commission.
AP1 (Applicant): Those three rights are rights which, in international law, would be termed jus cogens.
AP1 (Applicant): They cannot be derogated from.
AP1 (Applicant): They override all other rights in all circumstances.
AP1 (Applicant): I think in the case of the right to life, I think it is permissible in time of war.
AP1 (Applicant): If you're engaged in war, if you kill whilst engaged in war, then I think that that's probably not covered.
AP1 (Applicant): But apart from that, these rights are rights that are fully engaged in this case.
AP1 (Applicant): Fully engaged, I add.
AP1 (Applicant): I emphasize, rather.
AP1 (Applicant): And they are fully engaged for a reason.
AP1 (Applicant): The reason is this, that this court, as I understand it, is a human rights court.
AP1 (Applicant): It is not a court to do with international law in other spheres.
AP1 (Applicant): It is a human rights court.
AP1 (Applicant): It is concerned with the protection of human rights, not the rights of states, but human rights.
AP1 (Applicant): And it's extremely important that I make this point right at the outset.
AP1 (Applicant): Now, in my submission, the way the convention works is that the convention protects some rights absolutely, the rights that I've just mentioned, and other rights, the right to privacy, the right to freedom of expression, and so on.
AP1 (Applicant): These are relative rights.
AP1 (Applicant): These are rights that have clawback provisions, that there are circumstances in which states can say, well, for a legitimate purpose, if we act proportionately, then it's all right to breach those rights.
AP1 (Applicant): But these rights, not only can they not be breached, but they cannot be derogated.
AP1 (Applicant): And I've made that point, and I don't want to make it any further.
AP1 (Applicant): And I really move now to the three points that I've identified as the points that are in play, the points that arise in this case, in the order in which they appear from the submissions of the parties and from the questions asked by the learned judge or rapporteur.
AP1 (Applicant): The three points are these, and I shall address them seriatim.
AP1 (Applicant): The first point is the non-recognition point.
AP1 (Applicant): The second point is the jurisdictional link point.
AP1 (Applicant): And the third point is the duty to cooperate point.
AP1 (Applicant): I deal first with the non-recognition point.
AP1 (Applicant): As I understand the submissions of the Republic of Cyprus, they are to the effect that Cyprus is a sovereign state.
AP1 (Applicant): The Republic of Cyprus is a sovereign state.
AP1 (Applicant): Under international law, there is a duty of non-recognition of illegal states.
AP1 (Applicant): The TRNC, which is the acronym for Turkey and the governing body in North Cyprus, I have to be careful here, because of course there are sensitivities involved.
AP1 (Applicant): But the point is this, that so far as international law is concerned, the TRNC is an illegal state.
AP1 (Applicant): And so as I understand the submissions of the Republic of Cyprus, it being an illegal state, therefore the Republic of Cyprus is perfectly entitled not to recognize it and not to deal with it at all, not even by police officers, which is an extraordinary submission, you may think.
AP1 (Applicant): Because of course, police officers do not have plenipotentiary powers.
AP1 (Applicant): Police officers are police officers.
AP1 (Applicant): They have to engage in all sorts of investigations.
AP1 (Applicant): But anyway, the long and the short of it is that that is the submission of the Republic of Cyprus as I understand it.
AP1 (Applicant): My short answer to it is that actually that argument, the non-recognition argument, has been dealt with on at least five occasions before, Cyprus and Turkey, Fokah, Xenidis Aresti, and Dimopoulos.
AP1 (Applicant): All these cases decide this point.
AP1 (Applicant): And they decided time and time again.
AP1 (Applicant): And in my submission, it is not right to revisit the point time and time and time again.