| Applicant name | ADAMČO |
| Applicant type | prisoner |
| Number of applicants | 1 |
| Country | SLOVAKIA (No. 2) |
| Application no. | 55792/20 |
| Date | 12/12/2024 |
| Judges | Ivana Jelić, President, Alena Poláčková, Krzysztof Wojtyczek, Georgios A. Serghides, Raffaele Sabato, Alain Chablais, Artūrs Kučs |
| Institution | Court |
| Type | Judgment |
| Outcome Art. 8 | violation |
| Reason | Not necessary (prevention of disorder or crime” and the “protection of the rights of others”) |
| Type of privacy | Informational privacy |
| Keywords | quality of law |
| Facts of the case | The case mainly concerns a specific form of body search carried out on the applicant as a person serving a prison sentence at the “maximum guarding level” (maximálny stupeň stráženia). Known as a “thorough strip search” (dôkladná osobná prehliadka – “TSS” or, in the plural, “TSSs”), this generally consists of the subject of the search stripping naked, performing a squat, and being “visually searched” and it is carried out, inter alia, in connection with receiving “open visits” (including from his or her lawyers), taking part in investigative measures outside of the prison and being transferred to court hearings and between prisons. In addition, the case also concerns certain individual incidents when the applicant’s personal documents were inspected on the occasion of his conferring with his lawyers, and an one-off incident when, during a break in a court hearing, the applicant was refused to have one of his hands released from a special restraining device in order for him to be able to use the toilet. This device consists of handcuffs and leg-cuffs, which are connected by a chain that is attached to a belt (an “SRD”). |
| Analysis | The Court finds that no reasonable cause has been shown to have existed that would satisfy an objective observer that the applicant’s documents contained an unlawful element or that the privileged channel of communication with his lawyers was being abused in any other way. In addition, the Court notes that, as submitted by the applicant and not contested by the Government, the inspections of his documents were carried out, together with his TSS, by three officers. Any possibility for him to ensure that the inspection would not entail an examination of the contents of his documents must in such circumstances have been practically obliterated. Moreover, as was the case in relation to the TSSs, any remedy the applicant made use of was rejected without his substantive arguments having in fact been given any individual consideration. The inspection of the applicant’s documents accordingly cannot be said to have been accompanied by appropriate safeguards. |
| Other Article violation? | 3 |
| Damage awarded | that the respondent State is to pay the applicant, within three months from the date on which the judgment becomes final, in accordance with Article 44 § 2 of the Convention, the following amounts: (i) EUR 20,000 (twenty thousand euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable, in respect of non-pecuniary damage; (ii) EUR 3,500 (three thousand and five hundred euros), plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicant, in respect of costs and expenses; |
| Documents | Judgment |