The highest court of appeal [homepage, in French] referred on Monday about twenty questions concerning the legality of the police custody procedure to the Constitutional council [homepage] for review. The appeal court had itself been seized with these questions at the start of March [Agenda report]. Among the issues raised is whether a suspect should be allowed the assistance of a lawyer from the start of the custody period. Under article 63-4 of the code of criminal procedure [text], a lawyer may see his client for half an hour at the start of his detention, but will only know the charges against him 20 hours later. The intervention of a lawyer is delayed by up to 72 hours for suspects detained in relation to an investigation on terrorism or organized criminality. The Constitutional council now has 3 months to deliver a preliminary ruling on the constitutionality of the procedure.

This will be the second time the council is asked to examine the police custody procedure : with the introduction of a law on security and freedom in 1981, the council reviewed the length of the detention period, and held it to be in conformity with the Constitution. It will now have to determine whether interrogating a suspect without his lawyer represents a violation of the rights of the defense. It is likely to be influenced by the recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights [homepage] in Salduz v.Turkey [text], Mooren v. Germany [text], and Oleg Koslenik v. Ukraine [text], sanctioning the lack of proper safeguards during police custody on the basis of Article 5 of the European Convention [text, PDF], which guarantees the right to liberty and security, and Article 6, which guarantees the right to a fair trial.