Announce Grand Chamber judgment Gäfgen v. Germany

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28.05.2010

Press release issued by the Registrar

FORTHCOMING GRAND CHAMBER JUDGMENT

1 June 2010

The European Court of Human Rights will deliver its Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Gäfgen v. Germany (no. 22978/05) in a public hearing on Tuesday 1 June 2010 at 10.30 a.m. - local time - in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg.

The press releases and the texts of the judgments will be available after the hearing on the Court’s Internet site (http://www.echr.coe.int).

Principal facts

The applicant, Magnus Gäfgen, is a German national who was born in 1975. He is currently in prison in Schwalmstadt (Germany).

The case concerned his complaint that he was threatened with ill-treatment by the police in order to make him confess to the whereabouts of J., the youngest son of a well-known banking family in Frankfurt am Main, and that the ensuing trial against him was not fair. In July 2003, Mr Gäfgen was sentenced to life imprisonment for the abduction and murder of J. The court found that his guilt was of a particular gravity, meaning that the remainder of his prison sentence cannot be suspended on probation after 15 years of detention.

The child, aged 11, had got to know the applicant, a law student at the time, through his sister. On 27 September 2002, the applicant lured J. into his flat by pretending that J.’s sister had left a jacket there. He then suffocated the child.

Subsequently, the applicant deposited a ransom demand at J.’s parents’ home, requiring them to pay one million euros to see their child again. He abandoned the child’s corpse under the jetty of a pond one hour’s drive away from Frankfurt. On 30 September 2002 at around 1 a.m., Mr Gäfgen collected the ransom at a tram station. He was placed under police surveillance and was arrested several hours later.

On 1 October 2002 one of the police officers responsible for questioning Mr Gäfgen, on the instructions of the Deputy Chief of Frankfurt Police, warned the applicant that he would face considerable suffering if he persisted in refusing to disclose the child’s whereabouts. They considered that threat necessary as they assumed J.’s life to be in great danger from lack of food and the cold. As a result of those threats, the applicant disclosed where he had hidden the child’s body. Following that confession, the police drove to the pond together with the applicant and secured further evidence, notably the tyre tracks of the applicant’s car at the pond and the corpse.

At the outset of the criminal proceedings against the applicant, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court decided that all his confessions made throughout the investigation could not be used as evidence at trial as they had been obtained under duress, in breach of Article 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Article 3 of the European Convention. However, the court did allow the use in the criminal proceedings of evidence obtained as a result of the statements extracted from the applicant under duress.

On 28 July 2003, the applicant was found guilty of abduction and murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite the fact that he had been informed at the beginning of the trial of his right to remain silent and that all his earlier statements could not be used as evidence against him, the applicant nevertheless again confessed that he had kidnapped and killed J. The court’s findings of fact concerning the crime were essentially based on that confession. They were also supported by the evidence secured as a result of the first extracted confession, namely the autopsy report and the tyre tracks at the pond, and by other evidence obtained as a result of the applicant being observed after he had collected the ransom money.

The applicant lodged an appeal on points of law which was dismissed by the Federal Court of Justice in May 2004. He subsequently lodged a complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court, which refused to examine it by decision of 14 December 2004. That court confirmed the regional court’s finding, however, that threatening the applicant with pain in order to extract a confession constituted a prohibited method of interrogation under domestic law and violated Article 3 of the Convention.

In December 2004, the two police officers involved in threatening the applicant were convicted of coercion and incitement to coercion while on duty and were given suspended fines.

In December 2005, the applicant applied to the regional court for legal aid in order to bring official liability proceedings to obtain compensation for being traumatised by the investigative methods of the police.

The court dismissed the application, and, in February 2007, the court of appeal dismissed the applicant’s appeal against this decision, holding in particular that the applicant would face difficulties establishing a causal link between the threats of torture and the alleged mental damage necessitating psychological treatment. On 19 January 2008, the Federal Constitutional Court quashed the court of appeal’s decision and remitted the case. It found in particular that the refusal to grant the applicant legal aid had violated the principle of equal access to court and that whether the violation of his human dignity necessitated the payment of damages was a difficult legal question, which should not be determined in an application for legal-aid proceedings. The remitted proceedings are still pending before the regional court.

Complaints and procedure

The applicant complained that he had been subjected to torture when questioned by the police, in violation of Article 3. Relying on Article 6, he further submitted that his right to a fair trial had been violated in particular by the use of evidence secured as a result of his confession obtained under duress.

In a judgment of 30 June 2008, the Court held, by six votes to one, that the applicant could no longer claim to be the victim of a violation of Article 3 of the Convention and that there had been no violation of Article 6 of the Convention. On 1 December 2008, the case was referred to the Grand Chamber at the applicant’s request. On 18 March 2009, a hearing was held in public in the Human Rights Building in Strasbourg.

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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.