Constitutional Court prohibits detention for resisting police

The Constitutional Court has restricted the period a person can be held in custody without a court order to three days and stated that the police do not have the right to detain people for disobeying their orders. The Court’s judgement was made public by the President of the Court, Anatoly Holovin on Thursday in response to a submission lodged by 50 National Deputies.

The Constitutional Court stipulates that detention of a person in administrative proceedings in the absence of a court order giving the grounds may not last longer than in criminal proceedings. It can thus be no longer than 72 hours, and detention for up to 10 days is unconstitutional.

The Court also rejected the classification of disobeying a police officer’s legitimate demand as being an administrative offence.

The Constitutional Court has thus declared as unconstitutional Article 263 §§ 2 and 3 of the Code of Administrative Offences which allowed administrative detention of a person “for up to 10 days with the Prosecutor’s sanction if the offender does not have documents proving identify”.

The Constitutional Court also found unconstitutional the provision of the Code which gives the police the right to detain and hold in custody “people who have disobeyed a police officer’s legitimate demand before the court’s consideration of the case, but no more than 24 hours.”

The Constitutional Court recommends that parliament bring the Code of Administrative Offences in line with this judgement.