MOSCOW, August 12 (RAPSI, Maria Zueva) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ruled on Tuesday that the UK had violated the rights of ten British convicts in disallowing them to take part in free elections.

The plaintiffs filed an  application with the European Court of Human Rights, citing their right to free elections under Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The convicts claimed that, due to their status as inmates, they were automatically barred by British law from voting in the 2009 European Parliament elections.

In December 2013, the British Parliament’s Joint Committee on the Draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill published a report on this issue. The report’s authors advised the British Government to accept the bill’s provisions that allow inmates serving prison terms of up to 12 months to vote during all elections in the UK, including parliamentary, local and European elections.

In turn, the European Court of Human Rights upheld the inmates’ application , stating that it had previously recognized the violation of foreign inmates’ voting rights, including Russia’s Sergei Anchugov and Vladimir Gladkov who appealed the voting ban, after being sent to prison, under Clause 3 of Article 32 of the Russian Constitution. In July 2013, the European Court of Human Rights recognized the violation of the Convention and, as in its current decision, ruled that the establishment of this fact was fair compensation for the moral damages incurred by the Russian inmates.