08 Aug Violation of Article 10 because of slander conviction

The European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 10 (freedom of speech) of the European Convention on Human Rights in the case of Toranzo Gómez v. Spain (application no. 26922/14, 20.11.2018). The case concerned the applicant being found guilty of slander after accusing police officers of torture.

The applicant, a member of an activist group, occupied a social centre. Mr Toranzo Gómez and another protester had fixed themselves to the floor of a tunnel they had constructed underneath the building so they could not be. The police put a rope around Mr Toranzo Gómez’s waist and tried to pull him out and when that failed they tied the two protesters up to immobilise them..

At a press conference in December the applicant described the police’s actions in trying to pull him out as torture. Mr Toranzo Gómez was charged with slandering the police officers and in July 2011 he was found guilty and fined.

The applicant complained that the domestic courts’ decision to find him guilty of slander was an undue interference with his rights under Article 10 (freedom of expression).

The Court had to balance the applicant’s rights under Article 10 with those of the police officers under Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life). The Court found in particular that the applicant was likely to have suffered pain and distress when the police had used a rope to try to pull him out of a makeshift tunnel during a sit-in protest at a social centre. However, the courts had applied an overly strict legal definition to his statement of torture, which he had meant in a colloquial sense as excessive force. He had also been fined, and threatened with prison sentence if he did not pay, which could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression. There had therefore been a violation of the applicant’s rights under Article 10.

References from the offical webiste of the European Court of Human Rights