France becomes first EU state to be convicted of torture

In a humiliating blow for the "country of human rights", France yesterday became the first EU state to be convicted of torture by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.

The torture occurred between November 25th and 29th, 1991, when a Moroccan-Dutch dual national, Mr Ahmed Selmouni, was detained by French police in Bobigny, a suburb north of Paris.

Mr Selmouni, who is now 57, filed a complaint saying that five policemen led by Commdt Bernard Herve had kicked him and beaten him with their fists and a baseball bat, crushed his toes and chained him to stairs.

One police officer, he said, forced him to kneel on the floor and then urinated on him. Mr Selmouni said he was threatened with a blow-torch and a syringe, and that another policeman raped him with a small truncheon.

The policemen wanted Mr Selmouni to confess to smuggling heroin. He is still serving a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking handed down in 1992.

The unanimous decision was delivered by 17 judges - including one Frenchman - from among the 40 countries which have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. It was based on medical reports carried out shortly after Mr Selmouni's detention at Bobigny. Doctors who examined the prisoner found that "almost the totality of the body of Mr Selmouni showed evidence of the violence endured".

The judges said that "pain and suffering were intentionally inflicted on the plaintiff, with the goal of obtaining a confession" and were of "an inhuman and degrading nature".

However, the medical reports did not prove that Mr Selmouni had been raped, or that the police were responsible for the loss of sight in his left eye. But the "repeated and prolonged violence, spread over several days of interrogation . . . must be considered as acts of torture within the meaning of article 3 of the Convention". They awarded Mr Selmouni Ffr 613,000 (£73,589) in compensation for mental and physical suffering and his legal costs.

The French justice system was also singled out for condemnation by the Strasbourg court when it convicted France of violating Article 6 of the Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a trial within a reasonable amount of time. It took 71/2 years after Mr Selmouni's torture by French police for his case to reach a French court - despite the fact that the Dutch government joined the lawsuit on his side as a civil party.

Last March 25th, a judge in Versailles sentenced Commdt Herve and his four colleagues to between two and four years in prison each. The decision provoked nationwide protests by French police unions. This month, an appeals court reduced all but one of the convictions to suspended sentences.

France is only the second country, after Turkey - convicted in 1996 - to be found guilty of violating the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.