FIFTH SECTIONCASE OF NIKOLAYENKO v. UKRAINE(Application no. 59342/19)      JUDGMENT STRASBOURG9 January 2025 This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.In the case of Nikolayenko v. Ukraine,The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting as a Committee composed of: María Elósegui, President, Gilberto Felici, Kateřina Šimáčková, judges,and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,Having regard to:the application (no. 59342/19) against Ukraine lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 1 November 2019 by a Ukrainian national, Mr Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Nikolayenko (“the applicant”), who was born in 1982, is detained in Novgorod-Siverskyy and was represented by Mr A.L. Yakovlev, a lawyer practising in Chernihiv;the decision to give notice of the complaint under Article 3 of the Convention concerning the applicant’s confinement in a metal cage during court hearings to the Ukrainian Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Sokorenko, from the Ministry of Justice, and to declare the remainder of the application inadmissible;the parties’ observations;Having deliberated in private on 5 December 2024,Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE1. The application concerns the applicant’s confinement in a metal cage during court hearings, in breach of Article 3 of the Convention.2. The applicant has been serving a life sentence for murder since 2001. Alleging that the criminal case against him had been falsified, he lodged a complaint against the investigating authorities, seeking to have a criminal investigation opened into the matter. The investigation was discontinued and resumed several times following legal challenges brought by the applicant against the investigator’s decisions.3. The applicant’s complaints were examined by the Desnyanskyi District Court of Chernihiv (“the District Court”), which held open hearings on 4 and 14 March 2019 and on 21 and 30 May 2019 and rejected the applicant’s complaints. During those hearings the applicant was held in a metal cage.4. The Government submitted that some of the hearing rooms in the District Court were equipped with glass cabins, but that those rooms had been occupied by other hearings on the above-mentioned dates, and therefore the applicant’s case had been heard in a room with a cage.THE COURT’S ASSESSMENTALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 3 OF THE CONVENTION5. The applicant complained that placing him in a metal cage during court hearings had been degrading and unjustified, in breach of Article 3 of the Convention.Admissibility6. The Government argued that the applicant had failed to exhaust domestic remedies as he had not complained to the court during the hearings about being held in a cage.7. The Court notes, with reference to the relevant principles of its case-law concerning the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies as set out in Mocanu and Others v. Romania ([GC], nos. 10865/09 and 2 others, §§ 220-26, ECHR 2014 (extracts)) and to the Government’s submissions as outlined in paragraph 4 above, that the Government did not explain how the suggested remedy could have been effective in practice given the fact that there were no hearing rooms equipped with glass cabins available in the District Court on the dates under examination.8.

Outcome for Article 3: violation