FIFTH SECTION
CASE OF EDZGVERADZE v. GEORGIA
(Application no. 59333/16)
 
 
 
 
JUDGMENT 
Art 2 (procedural) • Failure to conduct effective investigation into suicide of applicant’s husband the day after his questioning by police as a witness
 
STRASBOURG
20 January 2022
 
FINAL
 
20/04/2022
 
 
This judgment has become final under Article 44 § 2 of the Convention. It may be subject to editorial revision. In the case of Edzgveradze v. Georgia,
The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Chamber composed of:
 Síofra O’Leary, President,
 Ganna Yudkivska,
 Stéphanie Mourou-Vikström,
 Lətif Hüseynov,
 Lado Chanturia,
 Ivana Jelić,
 Arnfinn Bårdsen, judges,
and Victor Soloveytchik, Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 59333/16) against Georgia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by a Georgian national, Ms Zizi Edzgveradze (“the applicant”), on 23 September 2016;
the decision to give notice to the Georgian Government (“the Government”) of the application;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated in private on 7 December 2021,
Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:
INTRODUCTION
1. The case primarily concerns the applicant’s complaint under Article 2 of the Convention that no effective investigation was carried out into her husband’s suicide which had taken place the day following his questioning by the police as a witness in a case involving a friend of his. THE FACTS
2. The applicant was born in 1982 and lives in Tbilisi. She was represented by Ms N. Jomarjidze and Ms T. Dekanosidze, lawyers practising in Tbilisi. 3. The Government were represented by their Agent, Mr B. Dzamashvili, of the Ministry of Justice. 4. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 5. On 5 July 2013 a friend of the applicant’s husband – G.M. – was arrested on suspicion of possessing cannabis when a package was found near the latter’s car at the garage repair workshop where the applicant’s husband – M.M. – worked. M.M. was with G.M. at the time of the arrest and went to the police station to give a statement, apparently at the request of the police officers. 6. According to the report made by officer Z.M., M.M.’s questioning as a witness lasted one hour and twenty-one minutes. He confirmed that the package which the police had found near G.M.’s car had contained cannabis and that G.M. had shown it to him before throwing it away upon catching sight of the police officers. He stated that G.M. must have intended to give the substance to him, as he had consumed cannabis from time to time, most recently ten days earlier. 7. Following the questioning, M.M. underwent a drug test, which did not confirm consumption of narcotics; he was then released. 8. On 6 July 2013 M.M. left home early. At different times during the morning he was in touch with the applicant and three other individuals. Because he had revealed to a friend his intention to commit suicide at the “Tbilisi Sea” (an artificial lake in Tbilisi), the applicant and M.M.’s friends went there to search for him. 9. At around noon the applicant and her neighbour, M.P., called emergency services, stating that the applicant’s husband had gone missing at the Tbilisi Sea, and asking for the help of the police in locating him. They did not mention that he had had suicidal intentions, nor that he had been questioned by the police the previous day. The applicant could not specify her location; therefore it was agreed that she would meet the patrol officers at a yacht club nearby. Once the patrol officers arrived they were told of M.M.’s intention to commit suicide, so they drove the applicant to the police station in order to record her statement. The officers appear to have alerted colleagues and asked them to search for the applicant’s husband while they were away at the police station return (see paragraph 23 below). 10. At 1.55 p.m. a passer-by found M.M.’s dead body hanging from a tree near the seashore and contacted the police. An inspection of the scene carried out by the police did not reveal the presence of any suspicious items, and M.M.’s body was transferred to the National Forensic Bureau for examination. 11. On the same day, 6 July 2013, Gldani-Nadzaladevi police station, within whose territorial jurisdiction the applicant’s husband’s body had been found, opened a criminal investigation into suspected incitement to commit suicide (see paragraph 29 below). 12. On 7 July 2013 a prosecutor from the Chief Prosecutor’s Office questioned G.M. He noted that no physical violence had been exerted on him or M.M., and that “for most of the time” at the police station the latter had been within his area of visibility in the open-space office where the police officers had brought them. However, G.M. had been taken out of the room for about twenty minutes to some individual’s private office, where he had been told that there was no use in him denying the crime and that he had to confess to committing it. He had consistently refused to confess, so he had been returned to the open-space office. Afterwards M.M. had been taken out of the room for approximately forty minutes. Upon his return he had not displayed any signs of having been physically ill-treated. M.M. had seemed nervous before leaving the police station. Later, when M.M.’s statement (see paragraph 5 above) had been read out to him, G.M. had recalled thinking that M.M. would not have written that statement voluntarily. 13. On 8 July 2013 the applicant gave a statement to a police investigator, noting that her husband had told her that he had been subjected to verbal and physical abuse at the police station in order to force him into giving a statement incriminating his friend. In a subsequent statement of 25 October 2013 given to the prosecutor in the presence of a lawyer, the applicant stated that when her husband had told her about the events of 5 July 2013, he had stated that “no serious violence [had been] inflicted [on him] with a view to obtaining a statement.” As regards her earlier statement of 8 July 2013, she explained that she had heard about the physical ill-treatment from her husband’s colleagues rather than from M.M. himself. She also noted that her husband had not had any psychological problems, material problems or any worries that could have caused him to commit suicide. 14. On 9 July 2013 a private forensic expert produced a report which noted that M.M.’s body had various injuries around his neck that were (according to the expert) directly linked to the cause of his death. The report also noted a small haemorrhage on his left nostril. In a subsequent statement given to the prosecutor on 9 December 2013 the expert stated that the small injury on the left nostril must have been inflicted on M.M. either several hours before the suicide or in the process of M.M. committing it, and that his body had not displayed any signs of having been beaten. In response to a question from the prosecutor the expert excluded the possibility that the bruise could have been caused by physical ill-treatment. If such treatment had taken place, there would have been, in the expert’s explanation, other bruises on the body. 15. On 9 July 2013 the Deputy Chief Prosecutor noted that despite the fact that Gldani-Nadzaladevi police station had territorial jurisdiction to investigate the matter, “the circumstances revealed during the investigation and the specific nature of the case” warranted its investigation by the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of the Interior (the unit in charge of overseeing the lawfulness of the activities of those working for the Ministry, including the police) and assigned the case to the latter. The decision did not refer to the fact that M.M. had been questioned by the police the day before the suicide. 16. On 12 July 2013 a report ordered by the National Forensic Bureau found that M.M.’s body did not display signs of injuries other than those directly linked to the cause of death. In May 2014 the expert who produced the report confirmed his findings in a statement given to a prosecutor. 17. On 13 July 2013 G.M. was questioned again in the presence of his lawyer by an investigator from the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of the Interior. He acknowledged that he had been carrying cannabis in the circumstances described in M.M.’s statement of 5 July 2013 (see paragraph 5 above). G.M. repeated his earlier observations to the effect that he had observed M.M. while at the police station as the latter was being questioned in the same open-space office where G.M. had also been held. He noted again that M.M. had left the room for a while, without mentioning the duration of his absence. According to G.M., M.M. had not been subjected to any ill‑treatment while in the open-space office, and had not shown signs of distress or physical injuries when he had been leaving the police station. 18. Between 11 and 13 July 2013 an investigator from the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of the Interior questioned the six police officers who had been involved in G.M.’s arrest and M.M.’s questioning. According to those officers, G.M. had been approached on the basis of anonymous information that he was carrying cannabis, and M.M. had been a witness to the events in question – namely G.M.’s throwing away the package containing the illicit substance. They stated that M.M. had been calm throughout the events, had voluntarily gone to the police station to give a statement, and that M.M. had been subjected to no pressure of any kind (physical or psychological) in order to persuade him to incriminate his friend. The officers stated that G.M. and M.M. had been placed in the same open-space office (which had contained several desks), and that M.M. had been questioned in one corner of the room while G.M. had sat in another. Z.M. (the officer who had questioned M.M.) noted that another officer (G.Ma., who also mentioned this fact) had “talked to” (გაესაუბრა) M.M. while Z.M. had been drafting different documents concerning the case. The officers, some of whom mentioned that they had left the room on several occasions, excluded the possibility that another officer could have intervened in the questioning process; they also insisted that M.M. had stayed in the open-space office throughout the period of his presence in the building, that no pressure of any type had been exerted on him, and that he had remained calm throughout the process. After the questioning the applicant’s husband had been driven to a drug testing facility, which he left after undergoing a biological examination which had shown no trace of drug consumption. 19. In July 2013 an investigator from the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of the Interior also questioned the police station guards, who confirmed that M.M. had left the police building calmly and freely, without showing any signs of injuries or distress. He also obtained video footage taken by the cameras at the entrance to the building. An examination of the recordings revealed that M.M. had entered and exited the building without showing any signs of distress. Experts who had taken M.M.’s urine sample for the drug test (see paragraph 7 above) also noted that he had not exhibited any signs of injury or anxiety. 20. On 18 September 2013, noting the submissions made by M.M.’s family “about the possible link between his questioning by the police on 5 July 2013 and the suicide the following day”, the Deputy Chief Prosecutor assigned the criminal investigation to the Investigations Department of the Chief Prosecutor’s Office. 21. On 11 November 2013 M.P., the applicant’s neighbour, gave a statement to the prosecutor noting that she had visited the applicant and M.M. in the evening of 5 July 2013. She stated, among other things, that in response to her question about whether the police had beaten him M.M. had “replied that he had given the statement voluntarily as the police had put before him incontrovertible facts, such as covert recordings of his and G.M.’s conversations.”
22. In December 2013 the prosecutor questioned M.M.’s colleagues (G.Ba., G.Bi., T.Kh., M.K. and E.B.). They noted that on the evening after his questioning M.M. had returned to the garage repair workshop in a rather anxious state and had told them that he had been beaten by the policemen, who had forced him to give a statement incriminating G.M. They all indicated that there had been no signs of injuries on his visible body parts. G.Ba. stated that on 6 July 2013, when the applicant had asked for his help in searching for her husband she had told him that M.M. had barely slept the night following his questioning as he “had been made to sign a statement against” G.M.; he had told her that “he could not live with the name [of someone who had testified against his own friend].” After that, M.M. had called him and told him that he could not live with a “disgraced” name and that he had made an unsuccessful attempt to drown himself in the Tbilisi Sea and was now planning on hanging himself instead. The police had been called, but it had taken some time for the officers to locate them as they had been unable to give the exact address of their location. 23. On 3 June 2014 the prosecutor questioned the police patrol officers who had responded to the applicant’s call on 6 July 2013 (see paragraph 9 above). They noted that as they had arrived at the Tbilisi Sea, they had been told about M.M.’s suicidal thoughts, prompting them to call colleagues and ask them to search for the applicant’s husband’s car in the area, informing them that he had had suicidal intentions. They had then taken the applicant to the police station in order to take her statement, given that her account had contained “indications of a potential crime”. Immediately after bringing the applicant to the police station they had returned to the Tbilisi Sea area and had continued searching for the applicant’s husband together with their colleagues. M.M.’s body had been found approximately an hour later by a passer-by who had notified the police. No injuries had been visible on the body, and nor had there been any suspicious objects lying around it. 24. On 11 November 2014 the applicant and her lawyer were given an apparently informal opportunity to acquaint themselves with the criminal case material. 25. No investigative activities appear to have taken place between November 2014 and March 2016. 26. On 25 March 2016 a prosecutor supervising the investigation found that no crime had been committed and closed the investigation. She referred to the expert evidence and the witness statements, including those given to the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of the Interior by the police officers who had questioned the applicant’s husband, and by the police guards who had observed M.M. leaving the police station (see paragraphs 18-19 above). The decision emphasised that G.M. (see paragraphs 12 and 17 above) had indicated that M.M. “had been within his area of visibility during most of the time [that M.M.] had spent at the police station” and had not been subjected to any type of pressure during that period. The prosecutor also noted that despite the fact that M.M. had told his colleagues (G.B., G.B., T.Kh., M.K. and E.B.) that he had been subjected to physical pressure in order to force him to give incriminating evidence against G.M., those individuals had not noticed any signs of ill-treatment on M.M.’s body. Lastly, the prosecutor noted that the applicant had given contradictory statements regarding the alleged violence used against her husband: first she had stated that her husband had told her that he had been subjected to physical violence and verbal insults; later she had stated that her husband had denied having been subjected to “any serious violence”, stating that she had instead heard about it from her husband’s colleagues (see paragraph 13 above). The prosecutor therefore concluded that there had been no evidence to confirm that M.M. had been subjected to any ill-treatment, threats thereof or any kind of degrading treatment that could have led to his suicide. The criminal investigation was therefore closed. 27. On 16 June 2016 the applicant appealed against the prosecutor’s decision (see the previous paragraph). Among other issues, she complained of the inefficient response on the part of the police in view of the imminent risk to her late husband’s life. She furthermore complained of the ineffectiveness of the investigation in that it had allegedly concentrated exclusively on the absence of signs of physical abuse, while playing down the relevance of the allegation that psychological pressure had been applied. She also alleged that the prosecution had relied exclusively on the investigative actions carried out by the General Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. 28. The applicant’s appeal was rejected on 22 June 2016 on the basis of Article 106 § 1 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which stipulated that an order terminating an investigation could only be appealed against by an individual holding the procedural status of a victim (see paragraph 30 below), whereas the applicant had the status of a witness. RELEVANT LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND OTHER MATERIAL
29. Article 115 of the Criminal Code of 1999, as it was worded at the material time, provided that the “bringing someone to the point of suicide or attempted suicide by intimidation or violent treatment, or by systematically abusing the honour or dignity of the victim” was punishable by up to three years’ restriction of freedom or by imprisonment for up to five years. 30. Article 56 § 5 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 2009, as it stood between 5 July 2013 and 24 July 2014, provided for the prosecutor’s discretion to grant the procedural status of a victim. In accordance with amendments of that provision adopted on 24 July 2014, victim status could be granted by a prosecutor of his or her own motion or upon the request of the relevant individual. Article 106 § 11 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provided that an appeal against an order terminating an investigation could be lodged with the hierarchical superior of the relevant prosecutor by a person having the procedural status of a victim. 31. Article 33 of the Code of Criminal Procedure stipulated that the Chief Prosecutor (or an individual designated by the latter) had authority to deprive one investigative authority of responsibility for conducting a criminal investigation and to reassign it to another such authority, as necessary, regardless of jurisdictional competence. Ministerial order no. 34, issued by the Minister of Justice on 7 July 2013 (which was in force at the material time), clarified matters relating to investigative jurisdiction in criminal cases. It provided that an investigation into an offence that had possibly been committed by, inter alia, a police officer, was to be entrusted to a prosecutor. 32. The report on the visit to Georgia carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) between 1 and 14 December 2014 noted the submissions made by the Georgian Public Defender and the civil society representatives regarding the problem of impunity in the context of investigating allegations of ill-treatment. The latter had expressed concern regarding the independence of investigations and had noted as the “the main systemic issue ... that, although under the law the Prosecutor’s Office is competent to investigate any allegations/complaints/indications of ill‑treatment by law enforcement officials, in practice the initial inquiries and investigative acts are almost always performed by staff of the investigative departments of the respective Ministries.”
THE LAW
ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 2 OF THE CONVENTION
33. Relying on Article 2 of the Convention the applicant submitted, in her observations in response to the questions raised by the Court, that the authorities had failed to prevent her husband’s suicide and that no effective investigation had been carried out into the suicide which had taken place the day following her husband’s questioning by the police as a witness in a case involving a friend. The relevant part of Article 2 reads as follows:
“1. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally ...”
The alleged ineffective investigationAdmissibility

34. The Court notes that the application is neither manifestly ill-founded nor inadmissible on any other grounds listed in Article 35 of the Convention. It must therefore be declared admissible.

Outcome for Article 2: violation