The European Court of Human Rights‘ judgment this week in Hristovi v. Bulgaria, App. No.42697/05, Judgment of 11 October 2011, concerned allegations of excessive force, intimidation and threats against a Bulgarian couple by armed, masked police officers who burst into their apartment to conduct an arrest and search. The Court held that, while the applicants had not sufficiently proved the allegation of physical mistreatment, their allegations of intimidation and threats were sufficiently detailed to obligate the State to conduct an effective investigation, which it had refused to do, in violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment). The Court also criticized the lack of remedy under Bulgarian law for actions by State agents that caused psychological trauma, has had been experienced by the couple’s young daughter.
Furthermore, the Court took issue with the use of masked police officers and stated that such officers should be identifiable, in order to enable accountability for their actions. Specifically:
[t]he Court noted with concern, however, that, as in other cases against Bulgaria where officers of specialised units had been involved, the police officers were not identified and questioned as they had been wearing masks and the investigation authorities refused to identify them. Aside the fact that the Court had serious reservations about using masked and armed police officers at all in such a context (a family setting where armed resistance was highly unlikely), it considered that the officers should have been identified and questioned, seeing that there had been a challenge to the manner in which their operation had been conducted. Furthermore, they should have been required to have on display some anonomyous means to identify them, such as a number or letter. In the applicants’ case this was not done and such a shortcoming meant that a certain category of police officers had virtual impunity with the result that the investigation could not possibly be considered effective.