In the case of Kotilainen and Others v. Finland, concerning the 2008 school shooting in the town of Kauhajoki in which 10 students and a teacher were killed, the Court found a violation of the right to life.

The Court held that the authorities could not have known of a real and immediate risk to the lives of the applicants’ relatives. However, having known of posts on the Internet by the perpetrator of the shooting, the police had interviewed him the day before the attack but had not deemed it necessary to confiscate his weapon. Hence, the authorities had not fulfilled their duty of diligence flowing from the particularly high level of risk inherent in any misconduct involving the use of firearms.

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Country profile - Finland

In the case of Aggerholm v. Denmark the Court found a violation of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment. The applicant, a schizophrenic man who had been detained in a psychiatric hospital for several years on account of his violent behaviour, was strapped to a restraint bed for almost 23 hours.

The Court held that the decision to strap the applicant in this manner had been the only means available to prevent immediate or imminent harm to staff and patients at the hospital. However, the Danish courts had not given sufficient reasons to justify the continuation of the measure, which constituted one of the longest periods of immobilisation of this type ever examined by the Court.

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Country profile - Denmark

In the case of Čivinskaitė v. Lithuania the Court held that there had been no violation of the Convention.

The applicant, who was a deputy chief prosecutor at the relevant time, was demoted for failing to carry out her duties properly in a high-profile investigation into the alleged sexual abuse of a child. In the proceedings before the ECHR she complained that the disciplinary proceedings against her had not been fair because of the political and media involvement in her case.

In the Court’s view, the independence and impartiality of the Lithuanian courts had not been compromised by the public statements of State officials and politicians or by the media coverage of the case.

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The Court is launching a series of 4 new factsheets on its case-law.

These documents, providing an overview of the ECHR’s case-law on certain issues, are available on the Court’s website. They contain summaries of the main judgments and decisions and of cases pending before the Court and are updated regularly. Many have been translated into various languages, including German, Croatian, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, with the support of, among others, the States concerned and national human-rights institutions.

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Factsheets

Sixty-one years ago, on 15 September 1959, the Court elected its first President, the British judge Lord McNair, and its first Vice-President, the French judge René Cassin. Fifteen judges have served as President of the Court since its creation.

Former Presidents of the ECHR