The European Court of Human Rights dismissed as “manifestly ill-founded” an application against Cyprus, lodged by a Swedish national who was convicted in 2013 after admitting he belonged to Hezbollah.
The applicant alleged that he was subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment by the Cyprus authorities.
Hossam Yaacoub was arrested on July 7, 2012, in a Limassol hotel room on the basis of intelligence that he was in possession of explosives and planning terrorist attacks against Israeli and other foreign targets in Cyprus.
Police seized a handwritten note and a red notebook. The note contained a reference to a scheduled flight of an Israeli air carrier from Tel Aviv to Larnaca, numbers and the names of two hotels. The notebook contained a map with a point circled in ink.
On July 13, 2012, Yaacoub admitted during questioning that he was a member of Hezbollah and had visited Cyprus four times.
He explained the meaning of the red notebook and his notes, as well as the connection between what he had written and the numbers of the buses carrying passengers of the Israeli airline.
On 21 March 2013 the Cyprus Criminal Court found him guilty on five of the eight counts, namely two counts of participating in a criminal organisation, two counts of participating in a criminal organisation which he ought reasonably to have known was connected to the commission of crimes, and one count of money laundering.
The court found that Hezbollah fell within the description of a “criminal organisation” as set out in the Criminal Code.
On 28 March 2013, the Assize Court imposed a four-year jail term for participation in a criminal organisation.
He appealed against his conviction to the Supreme Court in April 2013, which dismissed the case. In November 2014 Yaacoub was released after having served two years and five months of his sentence.
In his application to the ECHR, Yaacoub complained that he had been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, noting that some of the six contested statements, had been taken at night.
He alleged that questioning had been excessively long, strenuous and oppressive and in the course of them he had not been allowed to rest or sleep.
The Court ruled that the application was manifestly ill-founded and should be rejected, and unanimously declared the application inadmissible. (source CNA)
