The Danish State’s obligation to investigate and ...

Case 227/2018
Judgment delivered on 14 April 2021

A, B and C
vs.
The Ministry of Defence

The cases before the Supreme Court concerned the issue of whether A’s, B’s and C’s claims for compensation against the Danish State due to alleged assaults in Iraq were time-barred, and whether the Ministry of Defence had a duty to perform further investigations of the alleged assaults. The cases were brought against the Ministry of Defence in 2016. A’s case concerned arrest and detention from August to October 2003, B’s case related to arrest and detention from May 2006 to March 2007, and C’s arrest and detention from October 2006 to December 2007.

The Military Prosecution Service had investigated the alleged assaults, taking into consideration, among other things, the information in the writs submitted by A, B and C, statements from persons who participated in the operations in question and a number of documents regarding the detentions. The Military Prosecution Service had subsequently decided to discontinue the investigation on the grounds that there was no reasonable suspicion that criminal offences to be prosecuted by the State had been committed. During the High Court’s hearing of the cases, statements or other information had been provided by the persons concerned, and a number of other statements and documents had been produced. On this basis, the High Court had concluded that the descriptions by the victims of the alleged assaults appeared completely incredible.

The Supreme Court found no basis for arriving at a different assessment of the evidence based on the information produced in the case before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court noted in this connection that the descriptions of the alleged assaults – including that the arrests were carried out by Danish soldiers – on certain key points had been contradicted by military and legal documents and witness statements made by a number of people involved in the Danish defence. The evidence had thus shown, among other things, that the arrest of A was carried out by Iraqi police, and that the arrests of B and C were carried out by British soldiers.

Against this background, the Supreme Court took the view that the Ministry of Defence was not obliged to make further investigations of the alleged assaults. Moreover, in all three cases, the claims for compensation were time-barred before the cases were brought in 2016. The European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights were irrelevant to the question of the obligation to carry out further investigations and the limitation issue.

The High Court had reached the same conclusion.