KURT JUDGMENT OF 25 MAY 1998
29
in fact meet his death in custody. As to the applicant’s argument that there
exists a practice of violation of, inter alia, Article 2, the Court considers that
the evidence which she has adduced does not substantiate that claim.
109. Having regard to the above considerations, the Court is of the
opinion that the applicant’s assertions that the respondent State failed in its
obligation to protect her son’s life in the circumstances described fall to be
assessed from the standpoint of Article 5 of the Convention.
C. Article 3 in respect of the applicant’s son
110. The applicant, consonant with her approach to her complaints under
Article 2, further alleged that her son had been the victim of breaches by the
respondent State of Article 3 of the Convention, which stipulates:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment.”
111. Relying, mutatis mutandis, on the arguments used to support her
complaints under Article 2, she reasoned that the respondent State was in
breach of Article 3 of the Convention since the very fact of her son’s
disappearance in a context devoid of the most basic judicial safeguards must
have exposed him to acute psychological torture. In addition, she had seen
with her own eyes that he had been beaten by the security forces and this in
itself gave rise to a presumption that he was physically tortured subsequent
to his detention outside Hasan Kılıç’s house.
112. The applicant maintained that this presumption must be considered
even more compelling in view of the existence of a high incidence of torture
of detainees in the respondent State. With reference to the materials relied
on by her to ground her allegation of a practice of violation of Article 2, she
requested the Court to conclude also that her son was the victim of an
aggravated violation of Article 3 on account of the existence of an officially
tolerated practice of disappearances and ill-treatment of detainees.
113. She submitted further that the failure of the authorities to provide
any satisfactory explanation for her son’s disappearance also constituted a
violation of Article 3, and that the absence of any adequate investigation
into her complaint resulted in a separate breach of that provision.
114. The Government repudiated the factual basis of the applicant’s
allegation under Article 3.
115. Before the Court, the Delegate explained that in the absence of any
evidence as to the ill-treatment to which Üzeyir Kurt may have been
subjected while in custody the Commission did not find it appropriate to
find a violation of that provision. It considered that the applicant’s
complaints in respect of her son under Article 3 fell, like the Article 2
complaints, to be examined in the context of Article 5 of the Convention.