Background
Petar Stankov Marinov was stopped by police on 22 March 2019, refused to comply with a check, and tried to flee. He was apprehended and held at a police station for about one hour and 40 minutes before being released after no prohibited items were found.
Bulgarian administrative courts later held the detention unlawful, finding that he had been subjected to police provocation and had not known that the people approaching him were police officers. His subsequent damages action against the police was dismissed because the domestic courts found that the brief detention had not caused compensable non-pecuniary harm.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously held that the detention violated Article 5 § 1. Because the domestic courts had found the police detention unjustified and contrary to domestic law, it did not satisfy the Convention requirement that deprivation of liberty follow a procedure prescribed by law.
The Court rejected the Government’s arguments that Marinov had lost victim status or abused the right of petition by failing to disclose separate proceedings concerning criminal charges later brought against him. Those proceedings concerned the prosecution authorities and the charges, not the police-ordered detention, and did not provide compensation for that detention.
The Article 5 § 5 compensation complaint was declared inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded. Although the first-instance court had required proof of non-pecuniary damage, the Supreme Administrative Court accepted that mental suffering need not be strictly proved and refused compensation on equitable grounds given the detention’s very short duration. The Court found that Marinov had an enforceable right to compensation.
Key Takeaways
- A detention held unlawful under domestic law breached Article 5 § 1 in this case.
- Compensation for separate unjustified criminal charges did not redress an unlawful police detention.
- Article 5 § 5 does not require compensation in every unlawful-detention case where domestic courts apply an available remedy on the case’s facts.
Why It Matters
The judgment confirms that a domestic finding that police detention was unlawful will ordinarily establish an Article 5 § 1 violation. It also distinguishes between recognition of unlawfulness and an entitlement to monetary compensation.
The Court awarded no money: its finding of a violation was sufficient just satisfaction for non-pecuniary damage, and Marinov had not shown that his claimed legal costs had actually been incurred.