Şaman v. Turkey (Application no. 35292/05)

A selection of key paragraphs can be found below the judgment.

35. Against this background, and taking into account its above finding that the applicant had an insufficient knowledge of Turkish, the Court considers that, without the help of an interpreter, she could not reasonably have appreciated the consequences of accepting to be questioned without the assistance of a lawyer in a criminal case concerning the investigation of particularly grave criminal offences (see Talat Tunç, cited above, § 60). Consequently, it cannot find that the applicant waived her right to a lawyer in a knowing and intelligent way. Furthermore, the Court considers that additional protection should be provided for illiterate detainees with a view to ensuring that the voluntary nature of a waiver is reliably established and recorded. In the present case, however, no specific measures of this kind were envisaged.

36. In view of the foregoing, the Court considers that even though the applicant had the assistance of a lawyer and an interpreter during her trial before the first-instance court and subsequently before the appeal court, the absence of an interpreter and a lawyer during her police custody irretrievably affected her defence rights.

37. The Court therefore concludes that there has been a violation of Article 6 § 3 (c) and (e) of the Convention in conjunction with Article 6 § 1 in the present case.