issued by the Registrar of the Court
ECHR 050 (2020)
06.02.2020
Judgments and decisions of 6 February 2020
The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing eight judgments1 and 55
decisions2:
one Chamber judgment is summarised below; a separate press release has been issued for one
other Chamber judgment in the case of Felloni v. Italy (application no. 44221/14);
six Committee judgments, concerning issues which have already been submitted to the Court,
not appear in this press release.
The judgment below is available only in English.
Sakvarelidze v. Georgia (application no. 40394/10)
The applicant, Mariam Sakvarelidze, is a Georgian national who was born in 1949 and lives in Tbilisi.
The case concerned the death of her son and sister in 2003 when an armoured military vehicle
(AMV) hit their car.
The applicant and members of her family were driving along a street in Tbilisi in November 2003, at
a time of widespread protests known as the Rose Revolution, when their car was hit by an armoured
military vehicle driven by either a law-enforcement or military officer. The applicant’s son and her
sister were killed, while the applicant and her nephews were injured.
The Ministry of Defence, the Interior Ministry and the Tbilisi City Public Prosecutor’s Office
investigated the case in turn over the following years and it was closed and resumed several times.
In 2010 the Prosecutor’s Office informed her that despite investigatory measures it had been
impossible to establish with certainty what had happened during the accident. The Prosecutor’s
Office closed the case definitively in March 2017 owing to the expiry of the statute of limitation. The
applicant repeatedly enquired about the course of the various investigations, appealed against
decisions to close it and made complaints that it was ineffective.
Relying in essence on Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on Human Rights,
Ms Sakvarelidze complained that the Georgian State had been responsible for the traffic accident
which had killed her son and sister and that the subsequent criminal investigation had been
ineffective.
Violation of Article 2 (investigation)
Just satisfaction: 25,000 euros (EUR) (non-pecuniary damage)
1
Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, Chamber judgments are not final. During the three-month period following a Chamber
judgment’s 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. Under Article 28 of the
Convention, judgments delivered by a Committee are final.
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
2
Inadmissibility and strike-out decisions are final.
