Violation Of The Procedural Aspect Of The Right To Life Due To The Ineffectiveness Of The Criminal Proceedings Conducted Against Public Officials After The Train Accident
Events
Many people were killed and many others injured when a passenger train travelling between Haydarpaşa (Istanbul)-Ankara derailed in 2004 near Pamukova in Sakarya. Among those killed were the applicant’s then husband H.T., H.T.’s brother A.T. and A.T.’s children N.T. and M.T.
The Sakarya Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office (Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office) initiated an investigation into the incident and obtained an expert report on the cause of the incident and the state of fault. The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a decision of lack of jurisdiction in the investigation against the officials of the General Directorate of State Railways of the Republic of Turkey (TCDD) and sent the investigation documents to the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office. The outcome of this investigation could not be determined.
On the other hand, the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated a public prosecution against the engineers (first and second engineer) and the train conductor at the High Criminal Court on the allegation of causing an accident on the railway. As a result of the trial, a judgement of conviction was given for the engineers and a judgement of acquittal was given for the train conductor.
Upon the appeal of the judgement by the parties, the Court of Cassation reversed the conviction of the defendants. In the trial held after the reversal, it was decided to dismiss the cases. Upon the appeal of this decision, the judgement was also reversed and the first engineer was sentenced to imprisonment and the second engineer’s sentence was postponed.
The decision appealed by the parties was reversed by the Court of Cassation. Following the reversal of the judgement by the Court of Cassation, the Assize Court sentenced the machinists to judicial fines and postponed the judicial fines by dividing them into instalments. After the appeal of the decision by the parties, the Court of Cassation decided to dismiss the public cases against the defendants on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.
Allegations
The applicant claimed that his right to life had been violated due to the ineffectiveness of the criminal proceedings against certain public officials in connection with the derailment of a passenger train, which caused the deaths of several people and the injuries of many others.
The Court’s Assessment
Pursuant to the procedural aspect of the positive obligations imposed by Article 17 of the Constitution, the State must carry out an independent investigation into every suspicious death, enabling it to establish all aspects of the case, to identify those responsible and, where necessary, to punish them.
However, the obligation to conduct an effective investigation is not an obligation of result but an obligation to use appropriate means. Article 17 of the Constitution does not give the applicants the right to prosecute or punish third parties for an offence, nor does it impose a duty on the State to conclude all proceedings with a conviction.
When the procedures carried out during the proceedings subject to the application and the applicant’s allegations are evaluated together, the issue to be examined in the application is whether the proceedings were carried out with reasonable speed and diligence.
In the application of Burcu Demirkaya and Yücel Demirkaya (B. No: 2015/1232, 30/10/2018), it was decided that the procedural dimension of the right to life was violated due to the fact that the trial was not conducted with reasonable speed, stating that it was understandable that it took a long time to determine the statements of the relatives of the deceased and the injured due to the high number of deceased and injured in the incident that occurred, but that none of the elements in the trial justified the failure to finalise the trial. After the date of the aforementioned decision, the trial continued for 10 months and 25 days and finally the public case against the defendants expired. Considering the procedures carried out in the whole trial and the contents of the reversal decisions, the reason for the dismissal of the case due to the statute of limitations is that the case was protracted. In this respect, it cannot be said that the proceedings subject to the application were conducted with reasonable care and speed.
For the reasons explained above, the Constitutional Court decided that the procedural aspect of the right to life was violated in the application concerning H.T.
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