Cases

Belgium – “The star-girl”

The 19 year old Kimberley visits a tattoo shop with her dad. As a gift to Kimberley, her father pays for a tattoo of three small points on her forehead and he leaves for a terrace. The tattoo-artist shows that stars look much better than points and Kimberley is persuaded.
When her father returns, there appear to be 56 stars, tattood on her face. Kimberley sais she did not ask for this but that she fell asleep during the procedure. The tattoo artist holds on to his statement that Kimberley got exactly what she had ordered. Kimberley files a complaint with the police for assault and battery. The case is adopted by the media and Kimberley turns to a lawyer...

England - “Burglary”

The husband and wife, victims of a burglary, drive home up their drive late one night and in their headlights have a glimpse for 2 or 3 seconds of somebody wearing a hood running away from their home down the drive past their car with a swag bag. He disappears. It is noticed that he was wearing a red scarf. In their home there are a number of items missing and the place is in a bit of a mess. On one of the work surfaces is a cigarette butt which when analysed has the DNA of the defendant in terms that I “either the defendant or one in 5 billion people unrelated to the defendant could have left the DNA on the cigarette butt”.
Police go to arrest the defendant a few days after the burglary took place and find that he shares a bedroom with one other and that in the bedroom was a scarf with some sort of design on it, one of whose colours is red. The defendant is completely uninjured.
In interview he produces a prepared statement that he did not commit burglary and was in a named to street where he knocked on the front of the door of a stranger whose address he gives and asked for a glass of water.
The defendant is picked out on an identification parade by the husband occupier of the burgled premises but not by the wife who picks out a volunteer.
Police investigate his alibi and obtain a statement from the occupier who confirms that somebody did call at his house. The occupier got the impression that this was a would-be burglar who asked a question about a glass of water when he discovered that the house was occupied. He also noticed that the person in question appeared to have some mark or injury on his forehead.
The defendant has a number of previous convictions including one for a burglary such that at the trial there is an application to put his previous convictions before the jury. Brief argument as to whether or not it should go before the jury as it took place 2 years previously.
At his trial where his previous convictions (after short argument) have been placed before the jury the defendant gives evidence denying that he was involved in the burglary and stating that he has a brother whose whereabouts on the night in question he had no idea. He states that his brother and he have often been mistaken for one another.

Not knowing that the police had taken a statement from his alibi witness stating that the person who called at his address had an injury to the forehead, the defendant states in cross-examination that he was not injured at the time.

Romania - Foreigner’s rights of access to justice

The Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Court of Appeal of Bucharest introduces action in courts against an Iraki national, Mrs. Ayla Jassim to have her declared undesirable on account of reports issued by the Romanian Information Service regarding Mrs. Jassim’s connection/affiliation with an organized criminal group known for terrorism offences.
The result of having the undesirable status is that the Iraki national will be forced to leave Romania and cannot be admitted back into this country for the entire period decided by the court.
Given the fact that the reports issued by the Romanian Information Service are classified and thus the defendant cannot observe the documents directly, but only through the explanations of the judge on the factual findings, Mrs. Jassim claims breaches against her right of access to justice, as provided in the European Convention for Human Rights and the practice of the European Court of Human Rights.
In reaching a decision, the court will balance the defendant’s rights in light of the serious consequences of a decision declaring the defendant undesirable and  against  the provisions of the national laws on national security that classify the reports/evidence produced by the national information services and  exempt this kind of documents from  full disclosure  even to the parties they refer to.   

United States of America - This criminal trial involves a charge of unlawfully selling narcotics, i.e. cocaine, to an undercover (plainclothes) police officer.

The sale is alleged to have been made by the defendant, Steven Jones, who was approached by the undercover police officer and sold to him a small quantity of cocaine. The incident occurred on a city street.
At trial, the prosecutor will present testimony from the undercover police officer, who will testify about how he purchased the cocaine from the defendant Jones. The prosecution will also present the testimony of a second undercover police officer, who will testify that he observed the interaction on the street between defendant Jones and the first undercover police officer The defendant Jones will not testify. While the jury is deliberating, the audience will have an opportunity to discuss the case with the team members, and ask questions about the trial procedures.

European Court of Human Rights - Salah Nero v. The Netherlands

The facts
The Security Council of the United Nations has set up a special international tribunal to try captured Somalian pirates. This tribunal is called the International Criminal Tribunal for Piracy Originating in the Western Indian Ocean Area, or ICTP for short.

The Netherlands Government, whose policy it is to make The Hague the international legal capital of the world, have managed to make The Hague host to this new international tribunal also. As long as it has no premises of its own, it enjoys the hospitality of the International Criminal Court (or ICC). The first judges of the new tribunal are serving judges of the ICC. Like other international tribunals, ICTP has negotiated a headquarters agreement with the Netherlands Government.

The applicant Salah Nero is a Somalian. He is a member of the Beer tribe. The Beer are a small ethnic group who have been pushed out of central Somalia by the much stronger Rum tribe in bitter fighting and now occupy no more than a narrow strip of land along the coast. Lethal violence between the two tribes is no longer frequent but it occurs once or twice a year. Although historically desert nomads, the Beer succeeded for a time in making fishing their living, but fish stocks have dwindled in recent years mostly as a result of overfishing by foreign vessels.

The applicant and four companions took to sea in a fast motor boat, armed with Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They attacked a liquefied natural gas tanker sailing under the Panamanian flag but owned by a company registered in the Netherlands Antilles. The attack was thwarted by a helicopter of a frigate of the Royal Netherlands Navy, HNLMS Van Wassenaer van Obdam, which sank the boat carrying the applicant and his companions by machine-gun fire. The applicant was the only survivor among the attackers. He was picked up out of the water, miraculously unhurt, by the Van Wassenaer van Obdam. The Van Wassenaer van Obdam being at the end of her commission, she returned to the Netherlands forthwith.

The Van Wassenaer van Obdam arrived at the Dutch naval base of Den Helder nineteen days after the incident after an uneventful journey through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean which included a short stop at Souda Bay, Crete, on the fourth day to refuel. The applicant spent the entire nineteen days locked in a cabin, being let out only for an hour's exercise on deck each day

Within half an hour of the ship docking, the applicant was taken ashore and presented to an Investigating Judge of the Alkmaar Regional Court. The Investigating Judge found the applicant's detention to be lawful as a matter of Netherlands law and ordered him placed in detention for the purpose of transfer to the ICTP.

Three days later the applicant made his first ICTP appearance before Judge Moncreiffe. This judge had previously been an Australian professor of international law who had given an academic lecture in which he had expressed the opinion that Somalian pirates should be tried by an international tribunal rather than by any domestic courts. Judge Moncreiffe ordered the applicant to be held in detention until further notice. One week later Judge Moncreiffe approved the indictment of the applicant.

The United Nations Detention Centre at Scheveningen Prison being full up owing to the arrival, shortly before, of a number of detainees from the former Yugoslavia, Eastern Lebanon and the Sudan, ICTP have requested the Netherlands authorities to hold the applicant in pre-trial detention. He is detained pending trial in a floating detention centre moored next to some oil refineries in the port of Rotterdam. There is a pervasive smell from the oil refineries, which the applicant claims give him headaches. Smoking is not allowed anywhere in the detention centre.

The applicant has requested asylum in the Netherlands on the ground that he belongs to a persecuted ethnic minority. The Netherlands Government have turned his request down and made it quite clear that they intend to deport the applicant to Somalia immediately should he be acquitted by ICTP or released on its orders.

The applicant has made the complaints now before the Court to the Netherlands courts, all of which have declined jurisdiction on the ground that the applicant is a prisoner of ICTP. The final judgments in the case were given by the Supreme Court on (date) and by the Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State one day later.

The applicant's complaints are the following:
- illegal arrest (Art. 5);
- excessive violence during his arrest plus unnecessary killing of his friends (Art. 2 and 3);
- no prompt judicial control after his arrest (Art. 5 para 3);
- ICTP-judge not impartial, The Netherlands responsible (Art. 6);
- conditions of detention in the floating detention centre (Art. 3);
- no effective remedy available (Art. 13);