Prisoner's location in Spain
Reply
| Doc. 13673
| 24 January 2015
1. The Committee of Ministers sees no reason
to question the information received from the Spanish authorities
that there are no political prisoners in Spain: the prisoners referred
to in the written question were all convicted of serious criminal
offences following legal proceedings conducted in conformity with
the standards set by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human
Rights.
2. In reply to the Honourable Parliamentarians’ question, the
Committee of Ministers notes that the European Court of Human Rights
has not found Spain in breach of the Convention on the ground that
Spanish prisoners are not held in institutions in areas close to
their families. The European Prison Rules, adopted on 11 January
2006, recommend that “prisoners shall be allocated, as far as possible,
to prisons close to their homes or places of social rehabilitation”
(Rule 17.1). At the same time, Rule 17.2 stipulates that “Allocation shall
also take into account the requirements of continuing criminal investigations,
safety and security and the need to provide appropriate regimes
for all prisoners”.
3. With respect to the reference made in the written question
to the case Del Rio Prada v. Spain,
the Committee of Ministers notes that it closed the examination
of the supervision of the execution of this case in July 2014 in
the light of information provided by Spain, according to which all
prisoners considered by the Court as having been unlawfully denied
an early release, had now been released.
