TSALIKIDIS AND OTHERS v. GREECE JUDGMENT
13
who had filed a criminal complaint on 9 February 2006 and had later
challenged order no. 80/2006 issued by the public prosecutor at the Athens
Court of First Instance by virtue of which the case had been archived. In the
Government’s view, filing a criminal complaint and – in the event that it
was later archived – lodging an appeal against the public prosecutor’s order
were appropriate and effective remedies, as proven by the fact that the first
applicant had used them. The second and third applicants should therefore
also have availed themselves of these legal remedies, but as they had not
done so, the application should accordingly be rejected in respect of the
second and third applicants’ complaints relating to the initial criminal
investigation.
41. Secondly, the Government submitted that the application should be
rejected in its entirety due to non-exhaustion of domestic remedies, as none
of the applicants had submitted an application for damages under
Article 105 of the Introductory Law to the Civil Code in conjunction with
Article 2 of the Convention, which was directly applicable to the Greek
legal order. Relying on a series of judgments issued by the Supreme
Administrative Court, the Government claimed that an application for
compensation in respect of damage caused by unlawful acts or omissions
committed by the State could have resulted in an award of compensation in
respect of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage and it was therefore an
appropriate and effective legal remedy that the applicants should have used.
In the Government’s view, the present case should be distinguished from
the Court’s judgments in Papapetrou and Others v. Greece (no. 17380/09,
12 July 2011) and Zontul v. Greece (no. 12294/07, 17 January 2012) in
which the Court dismissed the Government’s objection of non-exhaustion
for failure to use the remedy under Article 105. In the former case the
applicants had submitted an application for damages which was still
pending at the time they applied to the Court and, in any event, no violation
of Article 2 was found. In the latter, the Court had dismissed the
Government’s objection on the basis that the applicants had joined the
proceedings as civil parties; however, in that case criminal proceedings had
already been initiated. It should be also distinguished from other cases
where an application for damages had been considered ineffective remedy
for complaints under other articles of the Convention.
42. Lastly, the Government raised an objection alleging lack of victim
status in respect of the second and third applicants. As the first applicant
was the only one who had filed a criminal complaint – and later an appeal
against the public prosecutor’s order archiving the case file – the
Government argued that the second and third applicants lacked victim
status.
43. The applicants contested the Government’s submissions. They
submitted that their application had already been declared admissible.
Furthermore, they argued that pursuant to Articles 43 §§ 5 and 57 of the