German prisoner wins preventive detention rights case
(STRASBOURG) - The European Court of Human Rights Thursday ordered Germany to pay 50,000 euros (73,000 dollars) in damages to a prisoner held in preventive detention for nearly 20 years.
The prisoner, known as Mr M, was given a five-year jail sentence in 1986 for attempted murder and robbery and ordered to be held in preventive detention as he was judged likely to commit further offences.
Under German law at the time of his conviction, preventive detention was limited to 10 years, which would have meant he was released in 2001.
But an amendment passed in 1998 allowed the detention to be extended indefinitely if it was judged necessary for public safety, and this was applied retroactively to M.
After appealing unsuccessfully to several German courts to be released on probation, M took his case to Strasbourg.
He argued his continued detention violated two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: the right to liberty and the principle of no punishment without law.
Seven judges, including a German, ruled unanimously in M's favour and ordered the German government to pay him damages.
Bernhard Schroer, M's lawyer, welcomed the judgment, which he said recognised his client had been imprisoned illegally for years.
Germany must now free M as well as 30 other inmates in a similar position, the lawyer said.
M, 52, has been out of prison for only a few weeks since he was 15, and has at least seven convictions for offences including attempted murder, robbery, aggravated robbery, serious assaults and blackmail.
He also wounded several fellow detainees, in particular a disabled man, and tried to rob and murder a woman accompanying him on a day trip out of his psychiatric hospital.
Experts judged that he had psychological problems but was still morally responsible for his actions.
The Strasbourg court ruled there was no justification for keeping M locked up for public safety as the offences he might commit were "not sufficiently concrete".
Both sides have three months to appeal against the judgment.
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