Mansur PAD and Others Vs.Turkey

62. The applicants contended that the Government had not submitted any supplementary documentation to explain why a decision not to prosecute had been taken or to show that a sufficient investigation had been carried out into the events.
63. The applicants claimed, in the alternative, that they should be dispensed from trying to institute judicial proceedings in Turkey as in the case of Issa and Others v. Turkey ((dec.), no. 31821/96, 30 May 2000), where the Court in its admissibility decision had considered that the judicial mechanism in Turkey was physically and financially inaccessible to the applicants, who lived in a village in northern Iraq.
2. The Court’s assessment
64. The Court reiterates at the outset that the machinery for the protection of fundamental rights established by the Convention is subsidiary to the national systems safeguarding human rights. The Convention does not lay down for the Contracting States any given manner for ensuring within their internal law the effective implementation of the Convention. The choice as to the most appropriate means of achieving this is in principle a matter for the domestic authorities, who are in continuous contact with the vital forces of their countries and are better placed to assess the possibilities and resources afforded by their respective domestic legal systems (see, Sisojeva and Others v. Latvia [GC], no. 60654/00, § 90, ECHR 2007-…, and Chapman v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 27238/95, § 91, ECHR 2001-I).
65. Having regard to the above principles, the Court notes that the respondent Government chose to make reparations following the diplomatic intervention of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who acted on behalf of the applicants. An agreement was signed and the Turkish Government transferred USD 175,000 to the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be paid to the relatives of the deceased (see paragraph 31 above). Accordingly, the Turkish Government could be deemed to have fulfilled their duty to make reparation for the alleged wrong by the payment of compensation to the Iranian Government. Those circumstances could lead the Court to conclude that it is no longer justified to continue the examination of the application within the meaning of Article 37 § 1 (c) of the Convention (see, mutatis mutandis, Association SOS Attentats and de Boëry v. France [GC], (dec.), no. 76642/01, § 39, ECHR 2006-XIV).
66. Be that as it may, the Court observes that the Government also raised an objection alleging non-exhaustion of domestic remedies which hinges upon the applicants’ failure to challenge the decision of 7 November 2000 not to prosecute. The applicants, however, disputed the Government’s submissions and contended that they were unable to challenge that decision since it had not been served on them. In this connection, they challenged the authenticity of the notification document and asserted, in the alternative, that the remedy in question was in any event ineffective given that the perpetrators of similar crimes were never prosecuted in Turkey.

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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