E.B. v. ROMANIA - 49089/10 (Judgment : Article 3 - Prohibition of torture : Fourth Section Committee)

Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, President, Egidijus Kūris, Iulia Antoanella Motoc, judges, and Andrea Tamietti, Deputy Section Registrar,

. In the morning of 21 May 2008 the applicant went to the local police in Mica accompanied by her husband and lodged a criminal complaint. She complained that she had been threatened with a knife by an unknown man and forced to have sexual intercourse with him.

. On 24 February 2009 the chief prosecutor rejected the applicant's complaint, finding that the evidence available did not suggest that physical force had been used by T.F.S. to have sexual intercourse with the applicant. The prosecutor relied firstly on the fact that I.L. had not noticed anything unusual about the applicant or T.F.S. when he had met them, and secondly on the absence of injury to the applicant's genital area.

. The applicant was represented before the appeal court by an ex officio lawyer, appointed upon a request made by her husband. The lawyer stressed that the evidence ordered by the Târnăveni District Court in the decision of 6 May 2009 was extremely important to the case, and that failure to collect this evidence at the relevant time was the prosecution's fault. She also pointed out that the applicant should have been given legal assistance ex officio during the investigation in order to adequately protect her procedural rights.

. Article 197 (1) of the Criminal Code regulating the criminal offence of rape, as in force at the time of the events, reads as follows: