Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 109

June 2008

Gäfgen v. Germany - 22978/05

Judgment 30.6.2008 [Section V]

Article 3

Inhuman treatment

Nature of threats of physical harm made by police interrogators in an attempt to secure information from a suspected child abductor regarding the missing child’s whereabouts: inhuman treatment

Article 6

Criminal proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Decision by criminal court to admit evidence obtained from information provided in confessions it had ruled inadmissible: no violation

Article 34

Victim

Domestic redress for ill-treatment by police officers including express judicial condemnation, the officers’ conviction and the exclusion of the applicant’s confession: loss of victim status

[This case was referred to the Grand Chamber on 1 December 2008]

Facts: The applicant was placed under surveillance and arrested after collecting a substantial ransom for an eleven-year-old boy who had been abducted. He was questioned by the police and initially gave false information about the boy’s whereabouts and the identity of his abductors. The questioning was adjourned till the following morning, by which time the police were concerned that the boy’s life was in great danger from the cold and a lack of food. On the orders of the deputy chief of police, the officers questioning the applicant warned him that he would suffer considerable pain at the hands of a specially trained person unless he disclosed the boy’s whereabouts. As a result, the applicant revealed the precise location of the child. He later accompanied the police officers to the scene, where the boy’s body was found, and confessed that it was he who had kidnapped and killed the child. He was charged with the boy’s abduction and murder. The trial court decided to exclude the confessions and statements he had made during the investigation as having been obtained under duress, but ruled that the evidence obtained as a result of the confessions was admissible. In returning a guilty verdict, it noted that, despite being informed at the beginning of his trial of his right to remain silent and that none of his earlier statements could be used as evidence against him, the applicant had nevertheless again confessed to the abduction and killing of the boy. The trial court’s findings of fact were essentially based on that confession, but were also supported by evidence – including the body and tyre tracks – secured as a result of his initial confession and by evidence obtained through the surveillance operation. The applicant was sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal on points of law was dismissed by the Federal Court of Justice and the Federal Constitutional Court refused to examine a constitutional complaint, although it did endorse the trial court’s finding that threatening the applicant with pain in order to extract a confession was prohibited under domestic law and violated Article 3 of the Convention. The two police officers involved in threatening the applicant were later convicted of coercion and incitement to coercion while on duty and given suspended fines. A claim for compensation against the authorities for the trauma allegedly caused by the police’s investigative methods is still pending. Before the European Court the applicant complained that he had been subjected to torture when question