Mansur PAD and Others Vs.Turkey

55. Accordingly, the Court finds that the victims of the impugned events were within the jurisdiction of Turkey at the material time.
B. Alleged failure to exhaust domestic remedies
1. The parties’ submissions
(a) The Government
56. The Government submitted that the applicants had failed to comply with the exhaustion of domestic remedies rule laid down in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention. In this connection, they averred that the applicants should have raised their allegations before the domestic authorities, at least in substance and in compliance with the formal requirements and time-limits laid down in domestic law. In the present case, the applicants had not done so. The applicants’ then representative, Mr Philip Leach, had submitted a petition dated 9 June 2000 to the local authorities nearly one year after the incident. Although foreigners were not authorised under Turkish law to represent clients before the Turkish courts, the judicial authorities had found the allegations serious and had conducted an investigation into them. However, neither the applicants nor their representative had pursued their complaints further. Nor had they instructed a local Turkish lawyer to pursue proceedings in Turkey.
57. The proceedings at issue had resulted in a decision not to prosecute, issued by the Şemdinli Chief Public Prosecutor (see paragraph 29 above). Although that decision had been served on the applicants, with the exception of Said Pourmola Borazan, who lived in Sweden, by the Turkish Consulate General in Orumiyeh in Iran, the applicants had failed to appeal against it. In this context, referring to the Court’s decisions in similar cases against Turkey where it had found that there were precedents indicating that appeals against decisions of public prosecutors not to prosecute had been successful and subsequently prosecutions had been brought (they cited Epözdemir v. Turkey (dec.), no. 57039/00, 31 January 2002; Fidan v. Turkey (dec.), no. 2429/94, 29 February 2000; and Saraç v. Turkey (dec.), no. 35841/97, 2 September 2004), the Government asserted that the applicants could not be considered to have complied with the exhaustion of domestic remedies rule laid down in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.

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Tags: 13, 14, 18 and 34 of the Convention, 3, 5, Articles 2, commit unintentional homicide, deprive an individual unlawfully of his or her lib, individual to torture or ill-treatment, intentional homicide