A European Court of Human Rights judgment concerning the case of a Ukrainian man who was sentenced to life in prison for robbery and a double-murder in 2005 will come into force today.
The court awarded 11,253 euros to Viktor Zamferesko in a Nov. 15 ruling
after concluding he had been tortured and coerced into a confession by police
while being interrogated.
In doing so, ECHR overturned a ruling by a Ukrainian court in an appeal
filed by Zamferesko, who said he was
severely abused by authorities after being arrested for robbery and the murder
of two women back in 2005. The abuse continued, he said, following his
conviction and subsequent imprisonment.
Zamferesko was compensated 11,000
euros to cover non-monetary damages and 253 euros for costs and expenses.
He’d claimed 1,881 euros and
approximately 486 euros in monetary damage, and 200,000 euros in non-monetary
damage. The court considered those claims to be unsubstantiated and excessive.
Details in the court’s report say Zamferesko endured repeated and excessive
physical and psychological abuse from police officers during an interrogation,
beginning on April 9, 2005.
Unless appealed, judgments by the Chamber of the Court become final three
months after being issued. In this case, Feb. 15 marks the end of that
three-month period. Ukraine did not appeal the court’s ruling during that time.
Including
Zamferesko’s case, the court ruled on appeals filed by 11 Ukrainian citizens,
regarding the violation of their rights by Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies.
In
particular, the ECHR found that Ukrainian law enforcement agencies had violated
the rights of the plaintiffs to a fair trial and to legal assistance.
One
of the plaintiffs, Vladislav Grinenko, demanded compensation for ill-treatment
and stated that a thorough investigation had not been conducted. Plaintiffs
Ramil Khayrov, Vyacheslav Nikolayenko, Sergey Afanasyev, Elena Yerokhina and Zamferesko
said their access to a lawyer had been limited.
In
addition, Zamferesko, who is currently serving a life sentence at Sokal Prison
Colony No. 47, located in western Ukraine’s Lviv region, said that the court had convicted
him on the basis of his confession, which was obtained illegally.
The
court upheld the claims of two plaintiffs who said they were illegally detained
at a police station for several hours, as well as a lawsuit filed by four
applicants who complained authorities violated their right to privacy.
Further
demands by some plaintiffs were not supported by the court.
As part of
the ruling, the ECHR obliged Ukrainian authorities to pay the 11 plaintiffs more
than 80,000 euros in damages, according to the court’s verdict.
In Zamferesko’s case the court wrote that beginning on April 9, 2005 “after the applicant was brought to the police
station the officers started pressuring him to confess to the murders.”
“His requests to be provided
with a lawyer were ignored. The officers showed him a gun and hinted that they
could easily shoot him and then fabricate a story that he had attempted to
escape. In view of his poor mental health they claimed, nobody would doubt
their version of events. They then punched him and started hitting him with a
bat. He started to parry the blows with his arms, but then soon gave up and
agreed to write a confession dictated to him by the police officers.”
On Sept. 23, 2005, the Lviv
Regional Court of Appeal found Zamferesko guilty of the murders as well as robbery
and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The court based its conclusions on the
applicant’s confession made earlier that year on April 9.
Ukraine convicts more than 90 percent of people
charged with crimes, almost all of whom do not face jury trials. Ukraine had
the second highest number of claims submitted to the court last year, according
to European Court of Human Rights Judge from Ukraine Anna Yudkivska.
Statistics showed the ECHR dealt with
7,606 cases in 2012, of which 7,305 were dismissed or thrown out. It delivered
701 judgments concerning 301 applications, 69 of which found at least one
violation of the European Convention of Human Rights.
As of Jan. 14, 13,005
applications concerning Ukraine were pending in the court.
Kyiv Post staff writer Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
