ECHR rules Georgia must pay €3,000 to a man, imprisoned for alleged drug possession in 2007
Having examined the case the ECHR found that ‘the manner in which the key evidence against the applicant had been obtained cast doubt on its reliability and accuracy’. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge
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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Georgia must pay €3,000 to man imprisoned for drug possession.
The case concerns ‘the alleged unfairness of the criminal proceedings’ conducted against the applicant in 2007 ‘on account of the manner in which the principal evidence was obtained and used against him’.
Denying the charges, the applicant - Merab Megrelishvili - complained that the drugs had been ‘planted’ by the officers of the Special Operations Department (SOD) of the Interior Ministry, which has been later abolished.
He also claimed that the searches had been ‘unlawful’ as he and his family members had been ‘arbitrarily refused the right to invite attesting witnesses’.
Stating that the domestic courts had ‘failed to give due consideration to the defence’s argument challenging the reliability and use of the evidence in question’, Megrelishvili said this has ‘rendered his trial unfair’.
Photo: ECHR
The ECHR has found that ‘the manner in which the key evidence against the applicant had been obtained cast doubt on its reliability and accuracy’.
In view of the importance of that evidence, the Court considers that, cumulatively, the procedural irregularities during the searches, the inadequate judicial scrutiny both before and during the trial, including the failure of the domestic courts to sufficiently examine the applicant’s allegations that the drugs did not belong to him, and the weakness of the corroborating evidence, rendered the applicant’s trial as a whole unfair”, the ECHR said.
It therefore concluded that the Article 6 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which says that 'everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by [a] ... tribunal …’ has been violated.
Assessments in Georgia
The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), which protected the interests of Megrelishvili at the ECHR said after the court ruling today that his case points at ‘structural and systemic problems’ in Georgia.
Meanwhile, the Georgian Justice Ministry stated that with its ruling the Strasbourg-based court has ‘reaffirmed’ that the ‘practice of planting drugs’ by law enforcement agencies indeed existed during the previous Georgian government in 2004-2008.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Georgia must pay 25,000 euros to Tbilisi resident Mariam Sakvarelidze, 71, whose son and sister died in 2003, during Rose Revolution protests in Georgia when an armoured military vehicle hit their car in the capital city on November 22, 2003, a day before the culmination of the 20-day protests.
The European Court of Human Rights 2019 statistics read that for Georgia, an unprecedented, 1,390 applications were declared inadmissible or struck out in the last year, compared to 141 in 2018 and 232 in 2017. Applications are declared inadmissible when they do not meet all the admissible criteria of the court and are dismissed without being examined, while applications are truck out when an applicant does not reply to the court’s requests in a mandatory time, after the application was assigned to judicial formation.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stated today that Russia must pay from €2,000 to €15,000 to Georgian nationals who were mistreated by the Russian government in the autumn of 2006, when hundreds of Georgian citizens were illegally detained and then deported from Russia.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has released its verdict on the Rustavi 2 private broadcaster’s ownership dispute earlier today, upholding the verdicts of Georgian courts on the case.Rustavi 2 and its current owners earlier filed with the ECHR as plaintiffs, claiming that the Georgian Court of Appeals and Supreme Court had delivered unfair verdicts.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled earlier today that Georgia must pay €10,000 to a Ukrainian man imprisoned for alleged drug possession upon arrival at Tbilisi International Airport back in 2008.
The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday ruled an appeal by former Georgian Defence Minister Bacho Akhalaia alleging unlawful detention and politically motivated prosecution against him to be inadmissible and declared the application “manifestly unfounded”.