Human rights—Right to life—State’s obligation to investigate death

European Court of Human Rights, Judges Ineta Ziemele, President, David Thór Björgvinsson, Päivi Hirvelä, George Nicolaou, Zdravka Kalaydjieva, Vincent De Gaetano, Paul Mahoney, 16 Jul 2013

It was an established principle that Art 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights required investigations to begin promptly and to proceed with reasonable expedition, and that was required quite apart from any question of whether the delay actually impacted on the effectiveness of the investigation.

In October 1990, MM and DG were shot in Northern Ireland by soldiers from a specialist unit of the British Army. The applicants were MM's mother and DG's father and daughter. In April 1993, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute the soldiers involved in the shooting. In 1994 and 1995, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) forwarded material to the coroner. Over two years went by before the coroner made his first contact with the applicants