They were “confined in cells 24 hours a day for around twenty days“. France was condemned this Thursday, April 18, 2024 by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The case concerns the conditions of detention in the prison of Condé-sur-Sarthe (Orne) during the social conflict of March 2019, after the attack on guards by a radicalized inmate.
Two guards were injured by an inmate who was serving a 30-year sentence and had become radicalized in prison. He had holed up with his partner for almost ten hours in the family life unit of the prison, before being arrested by the Raid (specialized intervention unit of the national police). His partner was shot and killed during the attack. A protest movement by prison officers then started, leading to blockade of the prison for several days. The social movement then spread to several French prisons.
A “situation of extreme vulnerability”
Contesting the conditions of detention during this blockage, two inmates of this Orne prison appealed to the ECHR “the extremely vulnerable situation in which they found themselves for 21 days“, indicates the Court in its judgment. They said they did not have “able to get rid of their trash or only on rare occasions“They also denounced.”very limited access to the telephone for the duration of the blockage and the inability to send or receive letters to their loved ones“, according to the same Source.
The French government for its part invoked the dimension “exceptional“of the situation, the supervisors not having”no right to strike“, and underlined “the considerable efforts undertaken by the prison administration to ensure service and maintain dignified conditions of detention“in a workforce context”very reduced“.
The Court, however, concluded that France had violated Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, relating to conditions of detention, finding “that the applicants’ conditions of detention constitute degrading treatment in the sense” of this article. France will have to pay 2,000 euros to each of the applicants for moral damage.
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