FIFTH SECTIONCASE OF TRETIAK v. UKRAINE(Application no. 16215/15)     JUDGMENT STRASBOURG17 December 2020  This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.In the case of Tretiak v. Ukraine,The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: Arnfinn Bårdsen, President, Ganna Yudkivska, Mattias Guyomar, judges,and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,Having regard to:the application (no. 16215/15) against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Ukrainian national, Mr Oleksandr Anatoliyovych Tretiak (“the applicant”), on 9 March 2015;the decision to give notice of the application to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”);the parties’ observations;Having deliberated in private on 26 November 2020,Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:INTRODUCTION1. The applicant complained, invoking Articles 3, 9, 14 and 18 of the Convention, that the authorities had failed to conduct an effective investigation into an attack on him which he believed had been caused by animosity towards him as a Jehovah’s Witness.THE FACTS2. The applicant was born in 1972 and lives in Kamenolomnia in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The applicant was represented by Mr K. Chernychenko and Mr A. Carbonneau, lawyers practising in Lviv and Paris respectively.3. The Government were represented by their Agent, Mr I. Lishchyna.4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.5. At the relevant time the applicant, who is from Crimea, was living temporarily in Strizhavka, a village in the Vinnytsya District (that is to say the suburbs of the city of Vinnytsya, the centre of the eponymous region) and was working for the Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation there.6. On the evening of 26 November 2013 the applicant was attacked on his way home in the street where he lived. According to the applicant, he was returning home after making visits around the village on behalf of the Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was attacked.7. According to the applicant, three individuals took part in the attack. From the assailants’ conversation with each other the applicant was able to gather that the ringleader was called Ruslan and the second individual was called Yevgen. Other Jehovah’s Witnesses, who knew the residents of the street where the applicant was attacked, identified Ruslan as Ruslan I. and Yevgen as Yevgen I., who both lived in houses near the site of the attack (see paragraph 10 below). The third person who had been present at or nearby the site of the incident was subsequently identified as A.D., Yevgen I.’s father-in-law. At the time in question Yevgen I. was an inspector at the Vinnytsa city traffic police office; according to the applicant, he had previously served as a neighbourhood police officer in the village where the attack occurred. According to the applicant, A.D. had previously served in correctional institutions.8. The applicant believes that the attack was motivated by religious hatred. In his submissions before the Court he described the sequence of events in the following terms. Ruslan I. and A.D. stopped the applicant. They smelled of alcohol. Ruslan I. hit the applicant on the head, while A.D. urged him on. The applicant thought that he had been mistaken for someone else.

Article of the Convention at issue: Article 3
Outcome: violation