DE CUBBER v. BELGIUM JUGDMENT 4 by fifteen accused, headed by the applicant; there were no less than nineteen persons intervening to claim damages (parties civiles). For the purpose of the trial, the court, which over the years had nine or ten titular judges, sat as a chamber composed of a president and two judges, including Mr. Pilate. Mr. De Cubber stated that he protested orally against the latter’s presence, but he did not have recourse to any of the legal remedies open to him for this purpose, such as a formal challenge (procédure de récusation; Article 828 of the Judicial Code). After a hearing which lasted two half-days on 8 and 22 June 1979, the court gave judgment on 29 June 1979. Mr. De Cubber was acquitted on two counts and convicted on the remainder, note being taken of the fact that he was a recidivist. He was accordingly sentenced, in respect of one matter, to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 60,000 BF and, in respect of another, to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 8,000 BF; his immediate arrest was ordered. 13. Both the applicant and the public prosecutor’s department appealed. On 4 February 1980, the Ghent Court of Appeal reduced the first sentence to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of 20,000 BF and upheld the second. In addition, it unanimously imposed a third sentence, namely one month’s imprisonment and a fiscal fine (amende fiscale), for offences which the Oudenaarde court had - wrongly, in the Court of Appeal’s view - treated as being linked with others by reason of a single criminal intent. 14. Mr. De Cubber appealed to the Court of Cassation, raising some ten different points of law. One of his grounds, based on Article 292 of the Judicial Code (see paragraph 19 below) and Article 6 para. 1 (art. 6-1) of the Convention, was that Mr. Pilate had been both judge and party in the case since after conducting the preliminary investigation he had acted as one of the trial judges. The Court of Cassation gave judgment on 15 April 1980 (Pasicrisie 1980, I, pp. 1006-1011). It held that this combination of functions violated neither Article 292 of the Judicial Code nor any other legal provision - such as Article 6 para. 1 (art. 6-1) of the Convention - nor the rights of the defence. On the other hand, the Court of Cassation upheld a plea concerning the confiscation of certain items of evidence and, to this extent, referred the case back to the Antwerp Court of Appeal; the latter court has in the meantime (on 4 November 1981) directed that the items in question be returned. The Court of Cassation also quashed, of its own motion and without referring the case back, the decision under appeal in so far as the appellant had been sentenced to a fiscal fine. The remainder of the appeal was dismissed. II. THE RELEVANT LEGISLATION