Judgment concerning Belgium
In the case of Benladghem v. Belgium the Court held that there had been no violation of the right to life.
The case concerned the death of the applicant’s brother, who was shot by members of the special units of the Belgian federal police during his arrest. He had been the subject of two investigations in Belgium and was considered to be particularly dangerous.
The Court, like the domestic courts, considered that when they had fired the shots, the police officers could be said to have been acting in the honest belief that their lives were under threat and could sincerely have believed that it had been necessary to use force; they had therefore been entitled to use appropriate means to defend themselves. In the present case, the shots fired by the officers had been in response to the threat posed by the applicant’s brother, who had seized his gun and pointed it at one of the officers. The use of force had not, in the present case, exceeded what had been “absolutely necessary”.