Obligation to inform the person concerned of the reasons for his arrest and of any charge against him/her (article 5, paragraph 2 of the echr)

Article 5, paragraph 2 of the ECHR should ensure that a certain person is obligatorily informed of the reasons for his deprivation of liberty. The person must be informed about the essential legal and factual basis for his deprivation of liberty in simple, non-technical and understandable language so that the individual can challenge the lawfulness of his/her arrest before the court if deemed to be necessary. It is a must to deliver this information to the person concerned. However, Article 9, paragraph 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not require that a person deprived of liberty must be accordingly informed at the moment of the deprivation of liberty. It is sufficient to carry out this task within a short period of time following the arrest. There is a question whether the delivery of the said information corresponds to the standards of Article 5 and this issue should be examined based on the circumstance of each individual case.⁸³² If a person is deaf he is entitled to a special court interpreter for deaf persons.⁸³³

At an early stage it is not required to present a case-file to the injured party to have any insight or to get all of the details of the indictment. What the individual needs is to be given information concerning the lawfulness of his arrest. However, as a rule, a mere categorisation of the offence the individual is charged with is not sufficient, neither is it sufficient according to the legal definition in the domestic criminal code. If a person is arrested due to a certain offence, he/she must be informed about the details of that offence, including the state of facts based on which the suspicion has been formed, and that suspect should be asked whether he/she would admit that he/she committed that offence or not.⁸³⁴ It is obvious that delays exceeding four months concerning the notification of the injured party about the legal basis for the arrest, after which the individual is a given the possibility to determine whether the arrest was lawful, do not satisfy the requirements under Article 5, paragraph 2 of the ECHR.⁸³⁵ Neither does the delay of two days satisfy the requirement from Article 5, paragraph 2 of the ECHR, in particular if no information was delivered to that person as to the legal basis for the deprivation of liberty.⁸³⁶ There is no violation of Article 5, paragraph 2 of the ECHR in the following cases: if a person spends 27 hours in detention and if he, immediately after being deprived of liberty, is informally informed about the offence he is charged with or if he gets this information after the decision on termination of investigation has been delivered to him prior to his being released, and if, during that time, he was not interrogated with regards to the lawfulness of his detention.⁸³⁷