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Implementation of a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the United Kingdom
Written question No 445 to the Committee of Ministers

Doc. 10304
4 October 2004

Reply from the Committee of Ministers
adopted at the 898th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies (30 September 2004)

I. Written Question No. 445 by Mr Wilkinson (Doc. 10171)

Given that, in the case of IJL, GMR and AKP v United Kingdom[1]The European Court of Human Rights found that basic procedural guarantees under Article 6 of the Convention had not been respected, in the proceedings which led to the applicants’ convictions, and that their trial had been unfair;

Noting that it is a firmly established in the principle of international law, as has been repeatedly confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights, that a State, which has violated an international obligation, has the duty, in respect of the injured party in particular, to put an end to the violation and erase its consequences;

Recalling the terms of Recommendation R (2000) 2 of the Committee of Ministers, on the re-examination or re-opening of certain cases at domestic level following judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, and particularly that the practice of the Committee of Ministers, in supervising the execution of the court’s judgements, shows that, in exceptional circumstances, the re-examination of a case or a re-opening of proceedings has proved the most efficient, if not the only, means of achieving restitutio in integrum;

Noting that, following the judgement of the House of Lords in the case of R v Lyons and Others, it is now established in English law that a case such as the IJL case, where the European Court of Human Rights has held that there was an unfair trial in breach of Article 6 of the Convention, cannot be re-examined.

Recalling that, in consequence of their convictions in an unfair trial, the Applicants:

a. have (in the case of two of them) been imprisoned and served sentence;

b. have (in the case of two of them) been fined substantial sums;

c. have suffered injury to reputation;

d. have criminal convictions against them [on the public record?];

e. have paid legal costs of their prosecution and defence and of subsequent unsuccessful appeals but that these matters remain unremedied, despite the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights;

Mr Wilkinson

To ask the Committee of Ministers,

How the Committee of Ministers intends to ensure that adequate measures are rapidly taken so that the situation of the applicants’ in the IJL case is rectified and restitutio in integrum is provided to each of them, in the light of the unfair trial which they have suffered.

II. Reply by the Committee of Ministers

The Committee of Ministers recalls that the violation of the applicants’ right not to incriminate themselves in this case resulted from the use at trial of incriminatory statements given by the applicants under statutory compulsion to inspectors appointed by the Department of Trade and Industry.

The Committee has noted in particular that the Court, when finding a violation of Article 6, paragraph 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, made no specific criticism regarding the reliability of the actual information obtained by the inspectors which was subsequently used at the trial against the applicants in violation of the Convention. The Committee has itself found no elements to support the idea that the applicants’ criminal conviction was erroneous or otherwise arbitrary.

The Committee nonetheless stresses that the use of evidence obtained through this kind of investigatory methods to support a criminal indictment is today prohibited following legislation adopted in 2000. The Committee here refers to the information contained in its Interim Resolution DH (2000) 27.

[1] Judgment 19 September 2000 (Applications 29522/95, 30056/96 and 30574/96).