6.  The applicants are Ukrainian nationals of Roma ethnicity. Before 10 September 2002 the applicants lived in the village of Petrivka, Ivanivskyy District, Odessa Region (hereinafter also “the village”). They currently live in Berezivka District, Odessa Region.
7.  On 7 September 2002 a 17-year-old ethnic Ukrainian was murdered in the village, allegedly by a Romany man who was apparently convicted of the murder afterwards. It appears that this occurred in the course of an altercation between Romany men and other youngsters from the village at a local bar or dancehall.
8.  On 8 September 2002 a crowd of village residents gathered and demanded that the Roma be expelled from the village. According to the statement of the village mayor, Mr M.S., made in the course of a subsequent criminal investigation, the local officials attempted to defuse the situation and urged the villages not to do anything illegal.
9.  On the same day the village council met. Among those present were: a representative of the Ivanivskyy District State Administration (“the District Administration”) and the head of the Ivanivskyy District Police Department (“the District Police Department”). According to the minutes of the meeting submitted by the applicants, in his opening remarks the mayor said, inter alia:
“... today a cruel crime was committed [in the village] by a group of residents of Gypsy ethnicity. One student of [the village high school] was murdered and three others were injured and are now in hospital in a serious state. This crime was made possible by the fact that no appropriate measures are being taken against them in the event of their [engaging in crimes]. Everybody knows that the spread of drug addiction, which is taking place in our village, is their fault. Today a meeting of villagers took place at which a negative opinion was expressed about the banditry and other [forms of crime] on the part of this category of people ... I invite the council members to speak responsibly and to express their opinion about the crime committed and about the decision of the villagers. I would like this meeting not to turn into something which aggravates inter-ethnic relations.”
10.  At the close of the meeting the council decided, in particular, to “support the decision of the meeting of the village residents to expel persons of Gypsy ethnicity from the village”.
11.  On 9 September 2002 the village council met again. The heads of the District Administration and the District Police Department and the chairperson and members of the Ivanivskyy District Council were present. The village council examined the question of “bringing the decision of the village council [of 8 September] concerning the expulsion of the persons of Gypsy ethnicity into compliance with legal norms”. The head of the District Administration invited the village council members to carefully consider the wisdom of their decision, drawing a clear line between crime‑related problems and inter-ethnic relations. A council member, D., stated that whatever the wording of the decision it would have no legal consequences and that legal action against drug dealers would also be ineffective. In fact, it was not possible to keep the situation under control. D. furthermore stated that the neighbours of the Roma residents were saying that it was necessary to cut off their gas supply and to burn down the Roma’s houses. At the close of the meeting the village council decided to ask law enforcement authorities “to ensure the expulsion of socially dangerous individuals, regardless of ethnic origin, from the village”.
12.  On the evening of the same day the mayor and the local police advised the applicants to leave the village, as a “pogrom” was about to start. Electricity and gas supplies to their houses were cut. Subsequently, in the course of the night of 9-10 September 2002 a crowd of several hundred people, allegedly led by a certain Mr O.M., ransacked the houses belonging to the Roma, destroying their belongings. A number of police officers were present but did not intervene to prevent the looting and apparently concentrated solely on preventing human casualties. The house where the first applicant lived had burned down. According to the Government, the results of the expert analysis of the causes of the fire were inconclusive (see paragraph 118 below).
13.  The applicants submitted a number of written statements from the applicants addressed to Ms Duducehava, the leader of a Roma association, and Mr Stoyanov, a lawyer who represented a number of applicants in the domestic criminal proceedings (see below). The statements bear various dates from 2004 and 2007, contain descriptions of the events of 7‑10 September 2002, and ask for help in dealing with the authorities. According to the general tenor of the statements, the applicants’ had been urged to leave by the police prior to the pogrom, and in their absence their houses had been ransacked by the mob – in particular, doors and windows had been smashed, and furniture and belongings destroyed or stolen.
14.  According to the fifth applicant’s statement, dated 17 November 2007, she and the fourth applicant (her husband) had been away from the village at the time of the events and had only learned about them when they had returned on 20 September. She had had to sell her house “at half the price” (“за полцены”), as had other Roma victims of the pogrom. The seventh, eighth, thirteenth and sixteenth applicants’ statements, as well as the statements of some other former Roma residents of Petrivka, were similarly worded, speaking of the houses having been sold for less than their normal price (for instance, Mrs M. Burlya, the second applicant’s wife, characterised the price for which her house had been sold as “very cheap”).
15.  The applicants submitted eight undated photographs showing the ruins of one or several houses, certain photographs showing signs of fire. The origin of these photographs is unclear. In her statement to Ms Duducehava in 2004 the sixth applicant referred to certain photographs showing damage to her and her relatives’ houses.
16.  The seventh and eighth applicants stated that all the Roma had left the village before the attack started.
17.  Applicants identified in the Appendix asserted in their statements to Ms Duducehava, Mr Stoyanov or to the police in the course of the subsequent criminal investigation that they had been away from the village at the time of the events of 7-10 September 2002 and of the attack and had only learned about it later.
18.  In her statement to Mr Stoyanov dated 18 November 2007 the ninth applicant stated that she had been at home with her two granddaughters (aged ten and fifteen at the time) when the attack started. Stones had started flying through the windows, four attackers had broken down the door and started shouting, and the older granddaughter had pleaded with the attackers not to kill them. The attackers had not touched the applicant or her granddaughters; the applicant had then fled.
However, in her statement to the police dated 26 September 2002 this applicant stated that she had fled the village prior to the attack and had returned the next day to find her home ransacked. In her statement (addressed to Ms Duducehava) and dated 13 June 2004 this applicant complained of having been expelled from her home but did not mention that she had personally witnessed any attack.
19.  According to a report published on 20 September 2002 in the regional newspaper Porto Franko and information given at a press conference held on 12 September 2002 by the Secretary of State (Державний секретар) for the Ministry of the Interior and by the head of the Odessa Regional Police Department (“the Regional Police”), police officers had been present in force and had observed the attack. However, they had not attempted to prevent or stop it, apparently concentrating solely on preventing casualties.
20.  The events were reported in a number of regional and national newspapers.
21.  The applicants alleged that after the attack they had had to move to another town and live with family and friends in overcrowded and inadequate conditions.
22.  On 10 September 2002 the Ivanivka district police initiated criminal proceedings against persons unknown on suspicion of disorderly conduct committed in a group (хуліганство вчинене групою осіб).
23.  On 10 September 2002 police investigators from Ivanivka, Berezivka, and several other districts conducted on-site examinations of the damaged houses in Petrivka (which included the taking of fingerprints). A regional police investigator conducted further on-site examinations in December 2002 and January 2003.
24.  On 12 September 2002 it was decided to constitute an investigative team composed of a senior investigator from the regional police department and investigators and other police officers from the Ivanivka district and three other districts.
25.  From 12 September to 9 October 2002 the regional police investigator obtained a number of expert opinions concerning the material found on the scene (notably assessing the damage there).
26.  On 20 September 2002 an officer of the Ivanivka police questioned neighbours of some of the applicants. Those neighbours stated that on the night of the attack they had seen around 150 and 300 people near the applicants’ houses.
27.  From 23 September 2002 to 27 January 2003 at least sixty village residents, including O.М. and P.M. (who were later accused by the applicants’ representative Ms Duducehava of having a role in the attack ‑ see paragraph 36 below), were questioned by the police – four of them by Ivanivka police officers and the rest by the regional police investigator. The villagers generally stated that there had long been tensions in the village between the Roma and non-Roma populations (many mentioning that this was connected with the alleged involvement of Roma residents in the drug trade), and that on the night of 9 September 2002 several hundred individuals had ransacked the houses of the Roma residents. This had been done to ensure that Roma would be expelled from the village. Some expressed approval of the attackers’ actions (as having been triggered by the authorities’ inaction against the drug trafficking), but denied that they had personally taken part in the attack.
28.  The police also questioned a number of applicants, who gave statements largely consistent with the account of events set out in paragraphs 7-17 above.
29.  On 14 November 2002 a certain Mr V. – apparently a Roma and a Petrivka resident at the time – was questioned. He stated that on 9 September he had been called in to Ivanivka district police station and told that residents of Petrivka would be attacking Roma houses. Upon learning this, he returned to the village and helped to evacuate his family, as well as other Roma residents, to another village.
30.  The police recognised the applicants listed in the Appendix as having the official status of aggrieved parties or of civil claimants (see paragraphs 53 and 54 below).
31.  In January 2003 (in the summary provided by the Government the relevant dates seem to be misstated as being in January 2002 and January 2007) the regional police investigator questioned three officers of the “Berkut” special police unit. They stated that about 2,000 persons had participated in the pogrom. They had asked the officers not to interfere in their actions. They had entered the houses and asked the individuals there not to resist and to leave.
32.  In February 2003 the police obtained an expert opinion in an attempt to identify the voices on a video cassette. It appears that the video cassette contained a recording of a meeting of village residents held before the pogrom. The expert concluded that no voice could be identified owing to the poor quality of the recording.
33.  On 4 February 2003 the police suspended the investigation for failure to identify the perpetrators. On 17 February 2003 the regional prosecutor’s office ordered that it be resumed.
34.  On 20 February 2003 the Ivanivsky district prosecutor’s office (“the DPO”) refused to institute criminal proceedings against the village council’s officials for lack of constituent elements of a crime in their actions.
35.  On 1 April 2003 the regional police investigator suspended it again.
36.  On 27 February 2005 Ms Duducehava, the chairperson of Romani Zbora, an NGO, wrote to the Odessa regional prosecutor’s office asking it to institute criminal proceedings against the persons who had participated in the attack and the officials who had allowed it. Specifically, she named Mr O.M., Mr P.M. and Mr I.D., all of whom, she alleged, had incited the attack; she named M.S., the chairman of the village council, and O.V., the head of the district police department, as being among the officials who had allowed it. She named the first fifteen and the seventeenth to nineteenth applicants as persons whose property had been damaged, summarising their statements to her (see, in particular, paragraph 13 above).
37.  On 28 March 2005 the Odessa regional prosecutor’s office informed Ms Duducehava that an investigation into disorderly conduct had been initiated and suspended on 1 April 2003 but that operational measures were being taken to identify the perpetrators (see paragraph 58 below for a summary description of the legislative framework in respect of such measures). Twenty-three individuals, including those whose statements had been added to Ms Duducehava’s complaint, had been recognised as aggrieved parties or civil claimants. Concerning the failure of the police to prevent the disorderly conduct in question, the head of the Regional Police had imposed disciplinary sanctions on the police officers at fault.
38.  On 21 November 2005 Mr I. Stoyanov, a lawyer representing a number of the applicants, complained to the President of Ukraine and the Prosecutor General that the crime committed had been incorrectly classified as merely disorderly conduct, even though it could be characterised as an act of discrimination and mass disorder. The identity of the guilty parties was well known.
39.  On 31 December 2005 the head of the regional police informed Mr Stoyanov that the investigation had been suspended on 1 April 2003 and that the regional prosecutor’s office had examined the case and left the decision to suspend it in force.
40.  On 25 January 2006 the DPO informed Mr Stoyanov of the decision not to institute criminal proceedings against the village officials (see paragraph 34 above) and stated that Mr Stoyanov could obtain information about the situation in the hooliganism case from the regional police, who were in charge of it.
41.  On 27 January 2006 the Ivanivka district police took over the investigation in respect of the hooliganism case and decided to resume it. On 5 April 2006 they suspended it again.
42.  On 22 August 2008 Mr Stoyanov wrote to the Prosecutor General’s Office asking to be informed about the progress of the operational measures to identify the perpetrators and to be allowed to study the case file.
43.  On 25 September 2008 the DPO informed Mr Stoyanov that the investigation had been lawfully suspended and that the aggrieved parties could only examine the case file once the investigation had been completed.
44.  The applicants submitted a copy of a letter from the district police dated 13 July 2009 addressed to Mr Stoyanov. The letter informed Mr Stoyanov, in response to his query, that on 10 February 2009 the investigation had been renewed and on 2 March 2009 suspended again for failure to identify the perpetrators. No reason for the alleged renewal was mentioned. The Government argued that the letter was not genuine (see paragraphs 88 to 91 below).
45.  On 21 March 2003 the Ivanivskyy District Court (“the District Court”), having heard an appeal by the DPO, quashed the village council’s decision of 9 September 2002 on the grounds that it was contrary to the Constitution and had been taken under the pressure exerted by a crowd of angry villagers in order to calm them down and prevent the lynching of the Roma.
46.  On 23 December 2005 the applicants (except the fourth and sixteenth) lodged with the District Court a civil claim for damages against the District Administration and the village council.
47.  On 23 November 2007 the District Court rejected the applicants’ claim, holding that it fell within the jurisdiction of the Odessa District Administrative Court. No appeal was lodged.
48.  On 3 May 2007 the first three and the fifth to nineteenth applicants lodged a claim seeking to have the failure of the DPO and the district police to investigate the incident declared unlawful.
49.  On 9 February 2008 the Odessa Circuit Administrative Court rejected the claim without considering it on the merits, holding that it fell outside the jurisdiction of the administrative courts. On 17 March 2008 the Odessa Administrative Court of Appeal upheld this ruling.
50.  On 5 June 2008 the District Court initiated proceedings concerning the claim brought by the first three and the fifth to nineteenth applicants under the Code of Criminal Procedure in which they challenged the decision to suspend the investigation. On 19 August 2008 and 8 April 2009 Mr Stoyanov lodged additional complaints on behalf of the first to third, sixth to fifteenth and seventeenth to nineteenth applicants in these proceedings. In those complaints, they stated that they had never been questioned and had never been recognised as aggrieved parties (потерпілі). They asked the court to order the police to recognise them as such. According to the applicants, at the time of the application to the European Court of Human Rights the proceedings were still pending before the District Court and no decision had been made.