The Constitutional Court has granted protection to a National Police agent who reported having suffered degrading treatment and threats when he was in a prison in Las Palmas as a preventive prisoner for an alleged case of drug trafficking, which was finally archived.
The court considers that this situation must be investigated and that both the first court that heard the complaint and then the Provincial Court of Las Palmas “did not carry out an exhaustive and effective investigation to clarify the facts” before filing the case.
This investigation “is constitutionally required in the case of complaints of mistreatment (received) in custody or in the case of actions by state agents,” highlights the Second Chamber of the Constitutional Court, which has granted the protection by four votes to two.
The sentence – for which Judge Laura Díez, from the progressive sector, was the speaker – explains that the appellant reported a series of behaviors that he considered degrading during his stay in the penitentiary center.
Among them, “threats, insults, reprisals with arbitrary schedules, coexistence with common prisoners in these conditions, deprivation of intimate communications and loss of belongings.”
More information
Junts maintains that Sánchez and Aragonès agreed on early elections to prevent Puigdemont's candidacy
The Constitutional Court, based on the doctrine of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and rulings of the European justice system, recalls that “degrading treatment” is prohibited by Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that it includes “misdemeanors of respect or impairment of human dignity or arouse feelings of fear, anguish or inferiority capable of breaking the moral and physical resistance of a person.
“When a person reports having suffered this degrading treatment at the hands of state agents, there must be an effective official investigation that allows the people responsible to be identified and punished,” he continues.
The guarantee court emphasizes that the police officer requesting protection repeatedly asked “in all judicial instances” that dealt with his case that two procedures be carried out: the complete identification of the officials who allegedly committed the mistreatment in order to subsequently , take their statement;
and the testimony of several witnesses.
Both the investigating judge and the Provincial Court of Las Palmas denied said proceedings, without giving reasons.
On the other hand, both judicial instances, when provisionally dismissing the case, indicated that it could be reopened “as soon as new data or new perspectives of success in the investigation are offered.”
From all of this, the Constitutional Court concludes that neither the court nor the Las Palmas Court carried out an “exhaustive and sufficient” investigation, not even ruling on the practice of procedures especially indicated in these cases, and despite considering that they could appear in a future indications of crime due to degrading treatment.”
In substance, therefore, the ruling considers that the appellant saw his right to effective judicial protection violated.
Two magistrates, César Tolosa and Enrique Arnaldo, have voted against the sentence because they consider that the conduct reported by the police officer during his stay in prison (obscene expressions, simultaneously spending one day, for a short time, in the yard with common prisoners without there being violence, having the same schedule as first-degree prisoners, the denial of intimate communication or the delay in the transfer of his backpack) did not deserve "the description of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment."
And that, therefore, they were not serious enough to be covered by the European Convention on Human Rights and article 15 of the Constitution.
Both magistrates add that the origin of the complaints had to do with the special protection provided in prisons to imprisoned police officers, precisely to safeguard their physical integrity, and the lack of a special module for them in the prison where was located, “which caused organizational problems.”