Case: Cases 4184/15 and others

Descriptors: Courts' Impartiality 

The dispute deals with the Court's impartiality. In the case, the appellants alleged that the Fourth Section of the Audiencia Nacional, which convicted them of a crime of belonging to a terrorist organization, lacked impartiality, since one of its members had participated as a magistrate-speaker in a case precedent, annulled in cassation by the Supreme Court, precisely because of the lack of impartiality. The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court dismiss the appeals filed by the appellants because they consider that the doubts about the judges' partiality were not justified objectively or subjectively.

The European Court of Human Rights dismisses the existence of subjective bias, because the magistrate did not express personal animosity in the framework of the procedure in which the appellant was finally convicted. However, in light of the context, the similarity and connection of the crimes, and their subsequent behavior, the Court does find objective doubts regarding the impartiality of the magistrate with the first appellant, a bias that would also affect the remaining members of the Section Four, and it would have harmed all the appellants and convicted persons, not only the first.

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