02 Feb A measure prohibiting conversations with other prisoners in violation of the Convention

In the case of Ivan Karpenko v. Ukraine (application no. 45397/13) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights, and a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) in conjunction with Article 3.

The case concerned the regime – a ban on talking to prisoners from other cells – in which Mr Karpenko had been held while serving his life sentence.

The Court noted that the legal basis for the ban on communicating with fellow inmates had been repealed in 2015. Nevertheless, the ban had been applied to the applicant for at least ten years prior the repeal and possibly had continued to be applied also after that time. At root, the conditions under which he had been held had amounted to systematic segregation. Preventing inmates from talking to each other amounted to a breach of the European Prison Rules, denying him “an adequate level of human and social interaction”.

The Court found the following to be exacerbating factors: the applicant’s almost permanent confinement to his cell, with only a brief outdoor walk and without any purposeful activities; the ban’s being automatic solely on the basis of his sentence, without any possibility of review; the long duration of the measure in question; and the deterioration of the applicant’s health and the absence of any adequate response to his related complaints and requests for assistance. Overall, the Court considered that the ban on the applicant’s communication with prisoners from other cells, alongside the other factors mentioned, had amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment in breach of the Convention.

References from the official website of the European Court of Human Rights