Published on 3 March 2025
 
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 57545/21
Oleksandr Sergiyovych BOZHKO
against Ukraine
lodged on 22 November 2021
communicated on 14 February 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns allegations that the authorities did not appropriately respond to the complaint by the applicant, a prosecutor at the General Prosecutor’s Office, of threats made against him by X., a former politician.
At the material time, X. was an advisor to the President of Ukraine. According to the applicant, several criminal proceedings were pending against X. in Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies. As a prosecutor, the applicant investigated several of them, including bribing, threatening an MP, forgery, and abuse of office. During the investigation, X. started sending the applicant threatening texts, such as "prepare yourself to go to prison", "I see you did not understand the signal", "I will place you in a detention facility", "watch yourself" etc; X. cursed the applicant in obscene language and accompanied the texts with obscenities.
On 9 April 2019 the applicant submitted a report of a criminal offence, and on 10 April 2019 an investigation was instituted. Between April 2019 and February 2020, the applicant and his family were assigned a state security guard. On 6 August 2020 the proceedings were discontinued at the pre-trial investigation stage on the grounds that the time-limit for pre-trial investigation had expired and no one had been notified as a suspect. On 1 June 2021 the Kyiv Court of Appeal dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the termination of the pre-trial investigation.
The applicant lodged a criminal complaint about ineffective investigation of his above complaint against X. As no reply followed, he challenged this inactivity in court, but his complaint was rejected by a decision of the Kyiv Court of Appeal of 22 June 2021.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1.  Did the treatment the applicant was subjected to reach the threshold of Article 3 of the Convention? If so, having regard to the procedural protection from ill-treatment, even when inflicted by private persons (see Beganović v. Croatia, no. 46423/06, § 71, 25 June 2009), was the investigation in the present case adequate for the purposes of Article 3 of the Convention?
 
2.  Have the State authorities complied with their positive obligations under Article 8 of the Convention concerning the threats against the applicant (see Beizaras and Levickas v. Lithuania, no. 41288/15, §§ 106-30, 149-56, 14 January 2020 and Nepomnyashchiy and Others v. Russia, nos. 39954/09 and 3465/17, §§ 76‑79 and 84-85, 30 May 2023)?