31 Aug Imprisonment for the publication of offensive comments on the work of the police

In the case of Savva Terentyev v. Russia (application no. 10692/09) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned the applicant’s conviction for inciting hatred after making insulting remarks about police officers in a comment under a blog post.

In February 2007 the police raided the offices of a newspaper in Russia’s Komi Republic. A nongovernmental organisation, the Memorial Human Rights Commission in Komi, issued a press release which criticised the police’s actions, linking them to a local election campaign. The head of Memorial published the press release on his blog and it attracted three comments the same day. One comment spoke of the police as “the regime’s faithful dogs”. Among other things, the applicants stated that every Russian town should have an oven “like at Auschwitz” to burn “infidel cops” as a first step to “cleansing society of this cop-hoodlum filth”. When the case came to trial, he apologised to former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps and to “honest” police officers who had felt insulted by his remarks.

The applicant was convicted in July 2008 of incitement to hatred and violent acts against police officers and he was given a one-year suspended prison sentence.

The Court found in particular that while Mr Terentyev’s language had been offensive and shocking that alone was not enough to justify interfering with his right to freedom of expression. The domestic courts had concentrated on the form and tenor of his words and had not looked at the overall context and had not provided any explanation for finding that his actions had been a danger to national security. He had been convicted and given a prison sentence, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances when it came to debates on issues of legitimate public interest.

Overall, the courts had not provided relevant and sufficient reasons for interfering with Mr Terentyev’s rights and his conviction had not met a pressing social need. There had therefore been a violation of Article 10.

References from the official website of the ECHR