The plaintiff is a middle-aged teacher, suffering from a psychiatric illness, who in the summer of 2017, refused to allow paramedics to enter her flat.

However, a member of her family managed to open the door. Her relatives were afraid that her condition had deteriorated because they could not contact her and therefore called the ambulance service.

The woman was taking a bath and was surprised that police officers had opened the door on her and wanted to take her away. The police handcuffed the woman, who put up no resistance, and pushed her into another room.

A crack was heard when her shoulder broke. Police officers then sat on her back for about 20 minutes before taking the woman to a hospital.

A friend of the plaintiff made a video recording of the police actions. The recordings unequivocally refuted the paramedics’ claim that the teacher had slipped while climbing out of the bathtub or that she attempted to jump out of a window.

The police officers’ superiors said they had acted lawfully, professionally, and proportionately. The prosecutor’s office concurred and terminated criminal proceedings.

The teacher’s family asked the Hungarian Helsinki Committee for help. Balázs Tóth, lawyer with the human rights NGO, filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office but it was rejected and the criminal proceedings were closed definitively.

The plaintiff then appealed to the Court of Human Rights with the help of the Helsinki Committee in 2018.

Tóth said “naturally we are satisfied with the verdict”, but “this case could have been settled back home in an assuring way. All that would have required was for the police to have admitted their obvious error or if not them, then the prosecutor’s office should have done its job in line with the law.

“Unfortunately, this is not our first case in Strasbourg when the domestic investigative authority did not question police officers either as witnesses or as suspects. This is not only unacceptable to the Strasbourg court but we as citizens also protest it”.

The court ordered the Hungarian state to pay €25,000 to the plaintiff, as well as €4,500 in court costs.