Last Updated on January 18, 2024 by LawEuro
European Court of Human Rights (Application no. 49853/10 and 9 others)
The applicants complained principally of the unfair trial in view of restrictions on the right to examine witnesses. They relied, expressly or in substance, on Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention.
The general principles concerning the right of an accused to examine witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf are well established in the Court’s case-law.
Turning to the circumstances of the present case and having examined all the material submitted to it, the Court has not found any fact or argument capable of persuading it to reach a different conclusion on the admissibility and merits of these complaints. It considers that the fact that the applicants were not provided with an opportunity to cross-examine those witnesses, some of whom had been anonymised, weighs heavily in the balance in the examination of the overall fairness of the criminal proceedings against them. Nor were the applicants able to obtain attendance of witnesses on their behalf, even though their relevant requests were sufficiently reasoned. The Court takes into account that there is nothing in the materials in its possession to suggest that the national judicial authorities made use of sufficient counterbalancing measures to compensate for the difficulties experienced by the applicants.
These complaints are therefore admissible and disclose a breach of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention.
CASE OF IVCHENKO AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA (European Court of Human Rights) 49853/10 and 9 others. Full text of the document.
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