Category: false imprisonment

Zenati v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and another [2015] EWCA Civ 80; [2015] WLR (D) 74

‘The detention of a person, which was initiated and continued for the purpose of bringing that person, reasonably suspected of having committed an offence, before a court from time to time as might be necessary, was lawful, under article 5.1(c) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, since by article 5.3 a person so detained was required not only to be brought before a court, but also to be tried within a reasonable time. That meant that he might be detained until trial provided that the trial took place within a reasonable time, and he was detained in accordance with article 5.1(c) until the date of trial. The persistence of reasonable suspicion was a condition for the lawfulness of continuing detention. It had to be implicit in article 5.1(c) and 5.3 that the investigating/prosecuting authorities were required to bring the relevant facts to the court’s attention as soon as possible, so that it might review the situation and order the person’s release if it were satisfied that there were no longer any grounds for the continuing detention. The article provided a right to compensation in the event of its breach in article 5.5, so that there was no compelling need to establish that such breach resulted in liability for the tort of false imprisonment.’

WLR Daily, 11th February 2015

Source: www.iclr.co.uk