ii. Article 5, paragraph 1(b)

Deprivation of liberty is also justified in the event of “lawful arrest or detention of a person for non-compliance with the lawful order of a court or in order to secure the fulfilment of any obligation prescribed by law”.

Accordingly, there are two additional possibilities envisaged for the lawful deprivation of liberty. The first one is the existence of the concrete judicial act, whereby an order is given on undertaking a concrete action or to restrict some action, in which case non-compliance with the order amounts to deprivation of liberty as a repressive measure. The second possibility is concrete and specific and is called the obligation prescribed by law, in which case non- compliance with the said obligation amounts to deprivation of liberty as a coercive measure.⁷⁶⁸ A typical case relating to an obligation prescribed by law is identification of persons based on their personal identification documents. So, the deprivation of liberty is obviously unlawful if it seems that it relies on the legal basis but, in real life, it constitutes a misuse of law.⁷⁶⁹ In the mentioned case, a police official arrested the appellant with the explanation that he had to establish his identity in the police station although, as it was subsequently clarified, he already knew the appellant but refused to check the personal identification documents which were presented to him for the purpose of establishing the appellant’s identity.