This judgment, pronounced Thursday, obliges France to pay 2,000 euros to each of the applicants for moral damage.
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France called to order. The country was condemned on Thursday April 18 by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for the conditions of detention in the Condé-sur-Sarthe prison (Orne). The case concerns “the material conditions of detention” of two inmates during a social movement in March 2019 in this penitentiary center. France will have to pay 2,000 euros to each of the applicants for moral damage.
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.
“Confined in cells 24 hours a day for around twenty days”
A protest movement by prison officers then began, leading to the prison being blocked for several days. The social movement then spread to several French prisons. Contesting the conditions of detention during this blockage, two inmates of this Orne prison appealed to the ECHR “the situation of extreme vulnerability in which they found themselves for 21 days”notes the Court in its judgment.
They said they had been “confined in cells 24 hours a day for around twenty days” and not have “were 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 impossibility of sending or receiving letters to their loved ones.”
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.
