5.  The applicant was born in 1987 and lives in Rotterdam.
6.  The applicant was charged with having, with an accomplice called V., robbed three supermarkets and with having, with two accomplices, mugged someone in the street outside a discotheque.
7.  V. made statements to the police admitting his own participation in the supermarket robberies and implicating the applicant in all four crimes.
8.  The applicant was tried before the Rotterdam Regional Court (rechtbank). V. was summoned as a witness by the defence.
9.  Not being suspected of having taken part in the street mugging, V. could not refuse to give evidence about it; he made a statement to the effect that he had not personally witnessed the robbery but had heard from bystanders that it had been committed by a group that did not include the applicant.
10.  V.’s statement disculpating the applicant was not believed by the public prosecutor (officier van justitie) and the court. V. was subsequently charged with perjury (meineed).
11.  On 30 August 2006 the Regional Court gave judgment convicting the applicant of all four crimes. It sentenced him to four years’ imprisonment and ordered the execution of a suspended two-week sentence of juvenile detention (jeugddetentie) imposed on a previous occasion when the applicant was still a minor.
12.  The applicant lodged an appeal (hoger beroep) with the Court of Appeal (gerechtshof) of The Hague.
13.  V. was again summoned as a witness by the defence. As relevant to the case before the Court, he kept silence on all four charges, including the street mugging in relation to which he was by this time being prosecuted for perjury.
14.  The Court of Appeal gave judgment on 4 March 2008 convicting the applicant of all four charges. It sentenced the applicant to six years’ imprisonment and, as the Regional Court had done, ordered the execution of the two-week suspended sentence of juvenile detention.
15.  The evidence on which the conviction of the fourth charge was based may be summarised as follows:
(a) The supermarket manager’s report to the police that his supermarket had been robbed;
(b) A statement made to the police by a cashier who had been forced at gunpoint to open her cash register, from which one of the robbers had snatched money and other goods;
(c) V.’s confession to the police, in which the applicant was named as co-perpetrator.
16.  The applicant lodged an appeal on points of law (cassatie) with the Supreme Court (Hoge Raad). As relevant to the case before the Court, he complained under Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention of the use made by the Court of Appeal of V.’s statements to the police to ground his convictions even though V. had refused to answer the questions of the defence under cross-examination.
17.  The Advocate General (advocaat-generaal) submitted an advisory opinion (conclusie) analysing the case-law of the Court, in particular the Chamber judgment Al-Khawaja and Tahery v. the United Kingdom, nos. 26766/05 and 22228/06, 20 January 2009, and expressing the view that V.’s evidence was “sole and decisive” in respect of the fourth charge but not in respect of the first three charges, for which sufficient other evidence was available.
18.  On 5 January 2010 the Supreme Court gave judgment dismissing the applicant’s appeal on points of law. Referring to its own case-law (its judgment of 6 June 2006, ECLI:NL:HR:2006:AV1633, Netherlands Law Reports (Nederlandse Jurisprudentie, “NJ”) 2006, no. 332, its judgment in the Vidgen case; see Vidgen v. the Netherlands, no. 29353/06, § 23, 10 July 2012), it found that the applicant had had sufficient opportunity to cross-examine V. or have him cross-examined. The mere fact that V. had refused to give evidence under cross-examination did not mean that use in evidence of his statement to the police was excluded by Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention.