issued by the Registrar of the Court

no. 963

14.12.2010

Serbian authorities failed to conduct effective investigation into

assaults likely motivated by religious hatred

In today’s Chamber judgment in the case Milanovi ć v. Serbia (application no. 44614/07),

which is not final¹, the European Court of Human Rights held, by a majority, that there

had been:

A violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment) of the

European Convention on Human Rights and

A violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention taken

together with Article 3

The case concerned the authorities’ failure to prevent the repeated attacks on a member

of the Hare Krishna community and to investigate properly those incidents.

Principal facts

The applicant, Života Milanović, is a Serbian national who was born in 1961 and lives in

Belica (Jagodina Municipality, Serbia). Since 1984, he has been a leading member of the

Hare Krishna Hindu community in Serbia. In 2000, he began receiving telephone threats

and in 2001 informed the police of his impression that they came from members of a

local branch of a far-right organisation called Obraz.

He was physically assaulted a number of times by unidentified men who cut or stabbed

him with a knife, starting in 2001, and then again in the summer of 2005, 2006 and

2007, each time in the evening or at nighttime in the proximity of a relative’s flat in the

town of Jagodina. On each occasion, Mr Milanović or the hospital where he was provided

with urgent care reported the incident to the police. Mr Milanović also informed the police

that his attackers probably belonged to the local branch of the far-right organisation. The

police questioned him and a number of potential witnesses and took some investigative

steps, but failed to identify the perpetrators. They informed the Ministry of Internal

Affairs that they had found no evidence that the organisations in question had ever

existed in the municipality of Jagodina.

Two months after the incident in 2005, the police filed a criminal complaint against

unknown perpetrators. From 2006 on, Mr Milanović was supported by a human rights

organisation with which he jointly filed criminal complaints in respect of the 2005

incident and the subsequent ones, alleging that he was the victim of a crime motivated

by religious hatred. During the investigation, Mr Milanović asked the police to question

the head of a regional political party, as to whether any of his party’s members were

1 Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month

period following its delivery, any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the

Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges considers whether the case deserves further

examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final judgment. If the referral

request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.

Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for

supervision of its execution. Further information about the execution process can be found here:

www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution

skinheads, and to visit a local church where allegedly the organisation Obraz had its

premises. These steps did not yield any results. Having repeatedly requested an update

on the status of the criminal complaints, Mr Milanović was informed by the public

prosecutor’s office that the police had failed to provide it with any information in this

respect. In 2008, Mr Milanović further informed the judge in a preliminary investigation

that he believed to have seen one of his attackers in the street, wearing a shirt with a

reference to another far-right organisation.

In September 2009, the Chief Public Prosecutor petitioned the Constitutional Court to

ban the suspected organisations, in particular because of their incitement to racial and

religious hatred throughout Serbia.

In its records, the police noted on a number of occasions that Mr Milanović was a

member of a “religious sect” and had a “strange appearance”. In a report of April 2010,

the police further noted that most of the attacks had taken place around a major

orthodox religious holiday and that Mr Milanović had subsequently publicised these

incidents in the media and thus “emphasised” his religious affiliation.

Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court

Relying on Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment) and

13 (right to an effective remedy), Mr Milanović complained about the authorities’ failure

to prevent the repeated attacks on him and to investigate them properly. Under Article

14 taken together with Article 3, he further alleged that this failure was due to his

religious affiliation.

The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 2 October

2007.

Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven, composed as follows:

Françoise Tulkens (Belgium), President,

Danutė Jočienė (Lithuania),

Dragoljub Popović (Serbia),

András Sajó (Hungary),

Nona Tsotsoria (Georgia),

Kristina Pardalos (San Marino),

Guido Raimondi (Italy), Judges,

and also Stanley Naismith, Section Registrar.

Decision of the Court

The Court had jurisdiction to examine the complaints only in so far as they concerned

events as of 3 March 2004, when Serbia ratified the Convention. For reasons of context

and in order to examine the situation complained of as a whole, it decided to take into

account all relevant events prior to that date.

Article 3

The Court considered that the injuries suffered by Mr Milanović, consisting mostly of

numerous cuts, combined with his feelings of fear and helplessness, were sufficiently

serious to amount to ill-treatment within the meaning of Article 3. Many years after the

attacks, the perpetrators had not been identified and brought to justice and Mr Milanović

appeared not to have been regularly updated of the course of the investigation or given

an opportunity to possibly identify his attackers from among a number of persons

questioned as witnesses and/or suspects by the police.

There had been shortcomings in the cooperation between the police and the public

prosecutor and the investigation seemed to have focused on Jagodina despite the fact

that the suspected far-right organisations were known for operating throughout the

country. Mr Milanović’s statement that one of his attackers, whom he identified in the

street, may have been a member of another particular organisation did not seem to have

been followed up at all. As from the second attack, it must have been clear to the police

that Mr Milanović, being a member of a vulnerable religious minority, was systematically

targeted and that future attacks were likely to follow. However, nothing had been done

to prevent such attacks.

While the authorities had taken many investigative steps and had encountered

significant difficulties, such as the apparent lack of eyewitnesses, the Court considered

that they had not taken all reasonable measures to conduct an adequate investigation

and they had failed to take effective steps in order to prevent Mr Milanović’s repeated ill-

treatment. There had thus been a violation of Article 3.

Article 14 taken together with Article 3

The Court considered that treating religiously motivated violence on an equal footing

with cases that had no such overtones meant turning a blind eye to the specific nature of

acts that are particularly destructive of fundamental rights. It was unacceptable that,

being aware that Mr Milanović’s attackers likely belonged to one or several far-right

organisations, the authorities had allowed the investigation to last for many years

without taking adequate action to identify or prosecute the perpetrators. The statements

made by the police in their reports, referring to Mr Milanović’s beliefs, his appearance

and the fact that he had publicised the incidents in the media, implied that they had

doubts as to whether he was a genuine victim in respect of his religion. As a

consequence, although the authorities had explored several leads proposed by Mr

Milanović concerning the motivation of his attackers these steps amounted to little more

than a pro forma investigation. The Court therefore held that there had been a violation

of Article 14 taken together with Article 3.