Background
Seven applicants complained about conditions at Korydallos Prison in Greece, including overcrowding and, in some cases, restricted warm-water access, poor hygiene, inadequate food, limited fresh air and passive smoking. Dimitrios Migdos was held there from 19 June 2019 until 17 September 2020.
One applicant, Siaka Darasouba, did not provide requested updated information to the Court and his part of the case was struck out. Five other applicants had been transferred or released before filing their Strasbourg application and had not used the domestic damages action available under Article 105 of the Introductory Law to the Civil Code.
The Court’s Holding
The Court held that Greece violated Article 3 in respect of Migdos. It accepted that Korydallos operated persistently above capacity during his detention and that he had suffered a manifest lack of personal space, which was neither short nor minor. The Government had not supplied precise information about the number of detainees sharing his cells.
The Court dismissed the Article 3 complaints of the five applicants who had left Korydallos before applying because they had failed to exhaust the available domestic remedy for a past violation. It struck out Darasouba’s application, found no need to examine Migdos’s separate Article 13 complaint, and rejected the remaining complaints as inadmissible or disclosing no appearance of a Convention violation.
Key Takeaways
- Persistent overcrowding and inadequate personal space at Korydallos Prison breached Article 3 in Migdos’s case.
- Former detainees seeking redress for past detention conditions must generally use Greece’s domestic damages remedy before applying to Strasbourg.
- Greece was ordered to pay Migdos EUR 5,900 in non-pecuniary damage and EUR 1,000 in costs and expenses.
Why It Matters
The judgment reinforces that prison overcrowding can itself be decisive under Article 3, especially where authorities cannot rebut an applicant’s account with reliable cell-occupancy information.
It also draws a procedural line between ongoing detention complaints and claims about past conditions: where the alleged violation has ended, applicants must ordinarily pursue an effective compensatory domestic remedy first.