The applicant, Timur Idalov, is a Russian national who was born in 1967 and is currently in a detention facility in Tavda, in the Sverdlovsk Region. Arrested on suspicion of abduction, Mr Idalov was placed in detention on 11 June 1999 and was officially charged one week later. His detention on remand was subsequently extended on a number of occasions until, in July 2001, he was released on bail. The same month, his case was submitted to the Khamovnichevskiy District Court of Moscow for trial. In October 2002, the court discontinued the bail and ordered his detention.
The first hearing on the merits of the case was held in September 2003. During that hearing, Mr Idalov was removed from the courtroom for improper behaviour. Between September and November 2003, another five hearings took place, during which the court examined witnesses and studied documents in the case file. After the examination of evidence was finished and the prosecutor and Mr Idalov’s representative had made their pleadings, Mr Idalov was admitted to the courtroom to make his final statement.
On 24 November 2003, the District Court convicted him of abduction, extortion, illegal acquisition and storage of firearms, and illegal acquisition and storage of drugs. It sentenced him to 15 years’ imprisonment. By an appeal judgment of 18 May 2004, the Moscow City Court excluded the charge of illegal acquisition and storage of drugs for lack of evidence. It upheld in substance the conviction in respect of the other charges and reduced the sentence to ten years’ imprisonment.
Between October 2002 and December 2003, Mr Idalov was detained in Moscow remand prison IZ-77/2, where he was transferred between cells on many occasions. According to Mr Idalov, the cells, in which he spent 23 hours per day, were severely overcrowded – accommodating at least 35 people each - and in an appalling condition. In particular, he submitted that the ventilation was inadequate, that he was exposed to passive smoking as most other inmates smoked, that the windows were covered with metal sheets, preventing access to daylight and making it impossible to read in the cell, and that the cells were dirty and infested with cockroaches, bedbugs and lice. He also maintains that during his numerous transfers from the remand prison to the court and back, which lasted up to several hours, he was placed in overcrowded vans without sufficient seats for all detainees. He also claims that he had to spend hours in small, dirty, overcrowded cells without food at the courthouse.
While serving his prison sentence, letters from the European Court of Human Rights to Mr Idalov were opened by the prison administration on two occasions. Relying on Article 3, Mr Idalov complained that the conditions of his detention and transport had been appalling. Relying on Article 5, he complained about the length, unlawfulness and shortcomings in the review of his detention on remand. Relying on Article 6, he maintained that the proceedings in his case had been excessively long and that, being removed from the courtroom, he had been deprived of the right to defend himself in person. He also complained, in particular under Article 8, that his correspondence with the European Court of Human Rights had been viewed by the administration of one of the detention facilities where he had been kept.
(from the official press-release prepared by the Registry Office of the European Court of Human Rights)