22
MAKARATZIS v. GREECE JUDGMENT
(a) in defence of any person from unlawful violence;
(b) in order to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent the escape of a person lawfully
detained;
(c) in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection.”
A. Arguments of those appearing before the Court
1. The applicant
34. The applicant submitted that Article 2 § 1 of the Convention
imposed a positive duty on States to protect human life. In particular,
national law must strictly control and limit the circumstances in which a
person may be deprived of his life by agents of the State. The State must
also give appropriate training and instructions to its agents who may carry
weapons and use force. However, at the time of the event, the necessary
regulatory framework was lacking. The law regulating the use of weapons
by Greek police officers was enacted in 1943. It was commonly agreed that
it was anachronistic and incomplete and did not afford general protection to
society against unlawful and excessive use of force by the police. Therefore,
the Greek State had not taken all the preventive measures that Article 2
demanded for the protection of human life.
35. Turning to the facts of the instant case, the applicant submitted that
his serious injuries were the result of unnecessary and disproportionate use
of force by the police. He emphasised that he had been unarmed and that he
was neither a criminal nor a terrorist. He had simply been scared and had
tried to escape. The police had opened fire on him without warning; all they
had done was to use two private cars in an attempt to stop him. As a result,
innocent civilians had been injured. The police had used neither their own
cars to create roadblocks, nor tyre-traps in order to burst his car’s tyres, nor
smoke bombs or tear gas in order to intimidate him. They had fired at him
in an uncontrolled and excessive way, putting his life at serious risk.
36. Further, the applicant claimed that the authorities had failed to fulfil
their procedural obligation under Article 2 to carry out an effective
investigation into the potentially lethal use of force. He identified a series of
shortcomings in the investigation, including, inter alia, the failure of the
authorities to identify all the police officers who had participated in the
chase, and in particular those who were responsible for his injuries, and
their failure to collect all the weapons used during the chase and all the
bullets fired at him.
37. Relying on a joint report published in September 2002 by Amnesty
International and by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights
(“Greece in the shadow of impunity – Ill-treatment and the misuse of