GUZZARDI v. ITALY JUDGMENT
DISSENTING OPINION OF THE PRESIDENT, Mr. BALLADORE PALLIERI
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I share the Court’s opinion that "as provided for under the 1956 Act ...,
special supervision accompanied by an order for compulsory residence in a
specified district does not of itself come within the scope" of our Article 5
(art. 5) (see paragraph 94 of the judgment). I also agree with the Court’s
view that, for the purposes of exhaustion of domestic remedies, it is not
necessary for the applicant to have pleaded before the national courts the
Article of our Convention or perhaps even the corresponding domestic
rules, such as the first and second paragraphs of Article 13 of the Italian
Constitution which read:
"Personal liberty shall be inviolable.
No form of personal detention, inspection or search and no other restriction on
personal liberty shall be permitted unless it is effected pursuant to a reasoned direction
of the judicial authorities and save in the cases and forms prescribed by law."
However, in my view, it should at least be required that the applicant has
complained of conduct on the part of the State that is contrary to the content
of these Articles. In addition, once more in my opinion and contrary to that
of the Court, account can be taken in this connection solely of the requests
which the applicant addressed to the national courts. It is only by comparing
the content of those requests with the content of the Articles in question that
one can decide whether the applicant’s intention was to complain of an
infringement of the freedoms provided for in those Articles. To this end, it
is not possible to rely, as the Court did, on mere sentences spoken or written
in the course of the domestic proceedings.
If Mr. Guzzardi’s request to the national courts are examined, it can be
seen at once that they sought first and foremost revocation of the
compulsory residence order: that was his principal request, even before the
Court of Appeal. They thus bore on an issue that has no connection with the
issue facing our Court which, as we have said previously, is not concerned
with the lawfulness in abstracto of the Italian Act of 1956.
It is true that the applicant also complained, as regards his actual
treatment on Asinara, of his inability to obtain on the island medical
treatment required by his state of health and to live together with his family
without hindrance. Here again, however, this is a matter of other freedoms
and other rights which have no connection with Article 5 (art. 5) of the
Convention, this being the only Article in respect of which the question of
exhaustion of domestic remedies arises. Finally, it is also true that the
applicant asserted that he was physically and mentally a prisoner on Asinara
and was vegetating there in conditions worse than those of his detention on
remand and that he described Cala Reale as a "veritable concentration
camp". However, we can find an explanation of what he meant by these
remarks in his appeal to the Court of Cassation: in that appeal he relied not
on the first and second paragraphs of Article 13 of the Italian Constitution,
which relate to the protection of individual liberty against any measure