ECHR

In the case of Baret and Caballero v. France, the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to respect for private and family life.

The cases concerned the prohibition on exporting the sperm of the first applicant’s deceased husband and the embryos created by the second applicant with her deceased husband to Spain, a country where posthumous conception was permitted.

The Court held that the domestic authorities had struck a fair balance between the competing interests at stake, that the respondent State had acted within its discretion, and that there had therefore been no violation of the Convention.

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In the case of Ainis and Others v. Italy, the Court held that there had been a violation of the right to life.

The case concerned the applicants’ relative who had died from a drug overdose while in police custody in Milan. He had been arrested as part of an anti-drug-trafficking operation. The Italian courts had found no liability on the part of the Ministry of the Interior.

The Court found that the Government had failed to provide convincing arguments or evidence that sufficient steps – such as searches or medical assistance – had been taken to protect the life of the applicant’s relative while in the Milan police headquarters.

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In the case of Romanov and Others v. Russia, the Court held that there have been several violations of the Convention.

The case concerned Russia’s alleged failure to protect the applicants, all members of the LGBTI community, from homophobic attacks and to conduct an effective investigation into the incidents.

The Court found that the authorities had failed to take effective measures to prevent the hate-motivated attacks and that the investigating authorities had repeatedly rejected the applicants’ allegations of homophobic motivation behind the attacks, without properly addressing their complaints in that regard. It noted with great concern that this appeared to be common practice in dealing with hate crimes against LGBTI people in Russia.

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In the case of Lapunov v. Russia, the Court has found violations of the prohibition of torture, the prohibition of discrimination, and the right to liberty and security.

The case concerned the alleged taking of the applicant – a gay man – from his place of work in Grozny to the local police headquarters, where he had been, along with other men, badly beaten and threatened seriously by police officers because of his sexual orientation. Those allegations were against a background of a reported “purge” of homosexual or presumed homosexual people in the Chechen Republic by the authorities there.

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