ECHR; Ümit Diriöz Turkey (No: 38560/04)

The fact that the prosecutor stood on a raised platform in the courtroom did not infringe the principle of equality of arms.
In today’s Chamber judgment in the case Diriöz v. Turkey (application no. 38560/04), which is not final1, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:
No violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (c) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case concerned the complaint by an accused that there had been an infringement of the principle of equality of arms in so far as the prosecutor stood on a raised platform whereas he and his lawyer had been placed, as was the rule, at a lower level in the courtroom. The Court considered that whilst this conferred a privileged physical position on the prosecutor in the courtroom, it did not place the accused in a disadvantageous position regarding the defence of his interests. The Court also reiterated that neither the letter nor the spirit of Article 6 of the Convention prevented a person from waiving of his or her own free will the right to legal assistance during police custody.

Principal facts
The applicant, Ümit Diriöz, is a Turkish national who was born in 1977 and is currently being held in Bayrampaşa Prison in Istanbul (Turkey). On 9 September 2000, during an altercation between several individuals, he fired a pistol several times. Four people were injured and a fifth, who had had nothing to do with the altercation, was hit by a stray bullet and subsequently died. On 12 October 2000 the public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant against Mr Diriöz, who had fled.
On 14 January 2001 Mr Diriöz was arrested while in possession of a forged identity card and placed in police custody. The custody report signed on that day indicated that he had been informed, among other things, of his right to legal assistance. In his statement drawn up on 16 January 2001 Mr Diriöz ticked the box “I do not wish to be assisted by a lawyer”.

echr , Government , Italy , istanbul , law , national , news , principle , prison , Switzerland , Turkey

Militant Democracy and Religious in Europe.

Patrick Macklem of the University of Toronto has posted Guarding the Perimeter: Militant Democracy and Religious Freedom in Europe' on SSRN. It covers the case law of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the religion state nexus.

This is the abstract: This essay tracks the concept of militant democracy in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, where it has migrated from a principle that authorizes a state to act in a militant manner to preserve democratic processes to one that entitles a state to establish perimeters and guard against threats of a different kind.

Militant democracy now authorizes a state to assume a militant stance toward the exercise of religious freedom that threatens substantive conceptions of democracy instantiated in its constitutional order. The essay identifies four substantive conceptions of democracy liberal democracy,  secular democracy, republican democracy and conservative democracy  to which militant democracy has migrated in recent years.

against , Articles , echr , European , International , national , news , principle , Religion