ÇAKICI v. TURKEY JUDGMENT
20
79. The Commission, rejecting the Government’s arguments in its
decision on admissibility, found that the applicant could be regarded as
having brought his complaints before the relevant and competent
authorities, who were under an obligation under Turkish law to investigate,
and he was consequently not required to pursue any other legal remedy.
80. The Court observes that the Commission found that the applicant
and his father had made petitions and enquiries to the National Security
Court prosecutor in relation to the disappearance of Ahmet Çakıcı. The
Court is also satisfied that their concerns were known to the prosecutors at
both the Diyarbakır National Security Court and Hazro, since it is apparent
that enquiries had been made from the former to the latter, as demonstrated
by letters of 4 and 19 April 1994 (see paragraphs 26-27 above). However,
the reaction of the authorities to the serious allegations in issue was marked
notably by inertia. Notwithstanding that the applicant maintained his
complaints in his statement to the public prosecutor of 9 September 1994,
which were confirmed in Remziye Çakıcı’s statement of 12 November
1994, no measures were taken by public prosecutors beyond enquiries as to
possible entries in custody records in Hazro and Diyarbakır and obtaining
two brief, ambiguous statements from Mustafa Engin. Later, in 1995, there
were no steps taken to verify the report that Ahmet Çakıcı’s body had been
found or to seek documentary confirmation of the purported identification,
by requesting copies of any autopsy report or burial records. In the absence
of an effective investigation into the alleged disappearance and in light of
the authorities’ repeated denial that Ahmet Çakıcı had ever been in custody,
the Court finds that there was no basis for any meaningful recourse by the
applicant to the civil and administrative remedies referred to by the
Government, and the applicant must be regarded as having done everything
that could reasonably be expected of him to exhaust the domestic remedies
available to him (see the Kurt v. Turkey judgment of 25 May 1998, Reports
1998-III, pp. 1175-77, §§ 79-83).
Consequently, the Court dismisses the Government’s preliminary
objection.
III. ALLEGED VIOLATIONS OF ARTICLE 2 OF THE CONVENTION
81. The applicant alleged that his brother had been taken into
unacknowledged detention and had since disappeared in circumstances
which disclosed a violation of Article 2 of the Convention. This provision
provides:
“1. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of
his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his
conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.