Background
Pero Šarac, a Croatian national born in 1972, was arrested in July 2019 on charges of trafficking approximately 600 kilograms of cocaine from Central and South America to several European countries, along with unlawful possession of weapons — an alleged organised crime operation involving seven co-accused, six of whom pleaded guilty. Croatian authorities ordered his pre-trial detention beginning 14 July 2019, initially on grounds of collusion risk and risk of reoffending, and later solely on reoffending risk. He was held at Zagreb Prison until his release on 28 December 2021.
Šarac lodged his application with the Court on 21 July 2021 complaining principally of inadequate conditions at Zagreb Prison. Following a Croatian Constitutional Court decision in March 2022 that examined the full detention period, Šarac extended his complaints in April 2022 to cover the entirety of his detention. His complaints included overcrowding, inadequate temperature, lack of fresh air, deficient hygienic facilities, insufficient natural light, and lack of privacy for toilet use.
The applicant also challenged the length and justification of his pre-trial detention under Article 5 § 3, and raised further complaints under various Convention articles. The criminal proceedings on the underlying drug-trafficking charges remained pending at the time of the Court’s judgment.
The Court’s Holding
The Court found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention with respect to the periods of detention set out in the appended table. Applying the principles from Muršić v. Croatia [GC] (no. 7334/13, ECHR 2016), the Court held that a strong presumption of an Article 3 violation arises when a detainee’s personal space falls below 3 sq. m, and that presumption can only be rebutted if, among other factors, the space reductions are short, occasional, and minor. Here, the periods in which Šarac had less than 3 sq. m were neither short nor occasional. For additional periods where he had between 3 and 4 sq. m, the Court — noting the Government’s failure to specify how long he actually had more than 4 sq. m — treated the entirety of those periods as falling below 4 sq. m, a level already found violative in the analogous Zagreb Prison case of Ulemek v. Croatia (no. 21613/16, 31 October 2019).
The Court declared inadmissible, as manifestly ill-founded, the Article 3 complaints relating to certain intermediate periods of detention in which no appearance of a violation was established. It likewise dismissed the Article 5 § 3 complaint concerning the length of pre-trial detention, finding that the domestic courts had relied on relevant and sufficient reasons — including the complexity of the organised-crime case, its international character, and the applicant’s alleged significant role — and had acted with special diligence, completing the investigation in under a year and bringing the case to trial within two years of indictment. All other complaints were also declared inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.
Under Article 41, the Court awarded Šarac €5,700 in non-pecuniary damages and €1,080 in costs and expenses, rejecting his claims for €70,000 in damages and over €42,000 in costs as excessive.
Key Takeaways
- Personal space below 3 sq. m triggers a strong presumption of an Article 3 violation; that presumption is not rebutted where the crowding is neither short-lived nor occasional.
- Where a government fails to provide sufficiently precise data showing a detainee actually had more than 4 sq. m for specific sub-periods, the Court will treat the entire disputed period as falling below the 4 sq. m threshold — a weighty factor in itself.
- Pre-trial detention of an accused in a complex international organised-crime case does not violate Article 5 § 3 where domestic courts articulate case-specific reasons (complexity, reoffending risk, nature of charges) and proceed with appropriate diligence.
- Awards under Article 41 for conditions-of-detention violations are modest; the Court here awarded less than 9% of the non-pecuniary damages claimed.
Why It Matters
This judgment reinforces the Court’s consistent line of authority — anchored in Muršić v. Croatia — on minimum personal space standards in detention. It illustrates that Croatia’s Zagreb Prison has recurrently failed to meet Article 3 requirements, with the Court explicitly cross-referencing Ulemek v. Croatia as a leading case disclosing the same institutional deficiencies. The decision serves as a continued reminder to Croatian (and other Council of Europe member state) prison authorities that chronic overcrowding, even when punctuated by periods of marginally compliant space, can sustain a Convention violation across an extended detention period.
For practitioners, the judgment also clarifies an evidential burden: governments that fail to disaggregate detention-space data by precise sub-period risk having the Court apply the less favourable (below 4 sq. m) standard across the entire disputed timeframe. This places a premium on detailed, contemporaneous record-keeping by detention facilities when they seek to rebut Article 3 overcrowding claims.