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MINISTERS’ DEPUTIES |
Decisions |
CM/Del/Dec(2024)1514/H46-39 |
5 December 2024 |
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1514th meeting, 3-5 December 2024 (DH)
H46-39 Kaverzin group (Application No. 23893/03), Afanasyev group (Application No. 38722/02) and Belousov (Application No. 4494/07) v. Ukraine Supervision of the execution of the European Court’s judgments
Reference documents |
Decisions
The Deputies
1. recalled that these cases concern torture and ill-treatment by law enforcement officers, mostly in order to obtain confessions, the systemic problem of ineffective investigations into such complaints, as well as the lack of an effective remedy in this respect;
2. considering the extreme difficulties faced by the Ukrainian authorities in the context of the continuing Russian aggression and the impact thereof on the implementation of the measures required for the execution of these judgments, including the need to re-allocate state resources and loss of access to occupied territories;
As regards individual measures
3. called on the authorities to ensure that the sums of the just satisfaction unclaimed by the applicants are made available to them for a period longer than one year, and to finalise the adoption of the draft legislative amendments aimed at resolving this problem;
4. noting with regret that no further individual measures are possible in the cases of Aleksandr Smirnov, Zamferesko, Kirpichenko, Samardak, Dushka, Ismailov, Leonov, Spinov, decided to close their supervision and adopted Final Resolution CM/ResDH(2024)337;
5. strongly urged the authorities to redouble their efforts and take promptly all the necessary investigative actions to achieve concrete results, where this is still possible, and to complete pending investigations in a Convention-compliant manner, duly taking into account the Court’s factual findings; called upon them to provide, by the end of September 2025, consolidated information in respect of each reopened investigation as regards the steps taken or planned to address the problems raised in the judgments, the means deployed to overcome obstacles and the time-limits to achieve concrete results;
6. called upon the authorities to identify adequate ways to provide meaningful redress to the victims, including through public apologies or other reparation measures, especially where investigations are no longer possible or pursuing them would be a burden out of all proportion to the benefit;
7. noted with interest the adoption of the Procedure for the Interaction between the Office of the Prosecutor General, the State Bureau of Investigations and the Office of the Government Agent aimed at ensuring effective and prompt ex officio re-examination of investigations into ill-treatment and invited the authorities to make full use of this procedure in a Convention-compliant manner to avoid the loss of evidence and the cases becoming time-barred;
As regards general measures
8. noted with interest the adoption of the Comprehensive Strategic Plan for Reform of Law Enforcement for 2023-2027 and its Action Plan, envisaging among others development of the legislation on compensation for damage inflicted on the victims of violent crimes; notedfurther the updates made to the Strategy on Combating Torture in the Criminal Justice System and to its implementing Action Plan; invited the authorities to keep the Committee updated on the implementation of all these policy documents, as well as on the practice of the application of the recently amended Article 127 of the Criminal Code;
9. noted with interest the adoption of the methodological recommendations for procedural guidance during pre-trial investigation of torture and invited the authorities to inform the Committee on the impact of their application;
10. underlining once again the need for strengthening the central role of the State Bureau of Investigations as an independent investigative body dealing with allegations of ill-treatment, urged the authorities to find means to ensure that pursuing of other important tasks by this investigative body is not carried out to the detriment of its core function of investigating allegations of ill-treatment committed by law enforcement officers;
11. while welcoming some positive indications demonstrating the impact of the measures taken for preventing ill-treatment in police custody, along with improvement and expansion of the Custody Records System, urged the authorities to remain vigilant and persistently pursue the “zero tolerance” policy towards ill-treatment and encouraged them to make full use of the Council of Europe cooperation opportunities to this end;
12. in order to enable the Committee to assess the impact of all the measures taken, invited the authorities to submit consolidated annual statistics, accompanied by the relevant analysis, which would include number of ill-treatment reports, number of investigations (launched, pending and closed), number of indictments sent to domestic courts, length of judicial proceedings, number of convictions/acquittals and types of sanctions imposed.
13. decided to resume examination of this group of cases at one of their DH meetings in 2026.