The Supreme Court has established in a sentence that an opinion of the Committee against Torture of the United Nations (UN) is not sufficient by itself to be recognized compensation. The judges have accepted an appeal from the State Attorney’s Office and have annulled the compensation of 3,000 euros that the courts recognized a woman who took her complaint of torture at a Córdoba police station to the UN, receiving a favorable opinion that established that she received “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” after being arrested in 2013 for a robbery. Two judges have voted against it, understanding that she should be compensated.
The UN Committee against Torture condemns Spain for ill-treatment of a woman during her detention
Further
The woman denounced before the courts of Córdoba that in January 2013 she was arrested for a robbery and that she received ill-treatment at the police station. According to her story, she was beaten when she was arrested, handcuffed without knowing the reason and taken to the police station while the policemen made her hit her head against the car’s bulkhead. At the police station, she denounced, she was stripped naked and someone took her money. Doctors confirmed that she had a broken nose and bruises on her wrists.
No Spanish court agreed to investigate the case. A court in Córdoba decided that she had committed an offense against public order and another of theft and that the policemen could not be charged. The Cordovan Provincial Court, with the support of the Prosecutor’s Office, confirmed this opinion and pointed out that the woman could have perpetrated a “false complaint” against the agents. The Constitutional Court also rejected her allegations and it was then that she decided to go to the United Nations and its specialized Committee in the fight against torture.
That Committee sided with the woman and established that the facts constituted “at least cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” as well as recognizing her right to be compensated. With that resolution in hand, the Ministry of the Interior rejected any disbursement but the National Court did recognize compensation of 3,000 euros for her. It was the State Attorney’s Office that took this resolution to the Supreme Court.
“They are not binding”
A Supreme Court that, as reported this Thursday, has annulled this compensation even though it has done so with division among its magistrates. The majority of the third room, as it has said with other opinions of other UN Committees, explains that this type of decision “does not have a binding nature, because it lacks direct enforceable force to determine the nullity of final judicial decisions of the judges and national courts”. A decision of this type, therefore, does not oblige the Spanish courts to compensate a victim of torture.
The legal value of these decisions, he reiterates, “do not subject to an obligation and do not have executive force”, although that does not mean that “they do not produce any legal consequences”, says the Supreme Court. “They must be taken into account by the States to guide their legislative action”, he explains. For the Supreme Court “there is no doubt about the injuries suffered by the now appealed party, such as the nasal fracture”, but after reviewing the case they understand that the police cannot be held responsible and, therefore, the State. Security cameras, for example, did not show “not the slightest hint of injuries.”
The decision was not unanimous. Two magistrates, Pablo Lucas and José Luis Requero, understand that the exoneration of the police officers through criminal proceedings does not prevent the woman from being compensated since her injuries are real. “We cannot accept that a detained person suffers injuries for which, in addition, he is not treated medically while he remains deprived of his liberty, whatever the cause thereof. It is not necessary for a Committee of the United Nations Organization to say it, since it is easily the result of our legal system. The State cannot not be responsible for what happened”.
