The largest portion of these compensations concerns a lawyer who complained about the violation of her freedom of expression (Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights). The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) awarded her compensation of 4,106 euros for material damages and 9,750 euros for moral damages, totaling 13,856 euros.
The case involves a criminal complaint filed by a judge against the lawyer for alleged aggravated defamation, based on claims of the magistrate’s lack of impartiality in a previous civil case. The criminal court in the Azores initially acquitted the lawyer in September 2020, but the judge’s appeal to the Lisbon Court of Appeal reversed the sentence in 2021, condemning her to pay 3,800 euros (1,800 for defamation fine and 2,000 for non-material damages).
The lawyer disagreed with the decision and appealed to the ECHR, arguing that the conviction represented a violation of freedom of expression. At the European level, the complainant and the Portuguese State eventually signed an agreement, with the Government committing to pay the defined compensation amounts within three months, thus ending the dispute.
Regarding the other case, the Portuguese State will have to pay 950 euros to a citizen who complained about inadequate detention conditions at the Porto prison between May 16 and 26, 2022. The Government acknowledged the poor conditions and offered to pay, but the complainant rejected the settlement proposal.
However, the court based in Strasbourg (France) explained that it already has extensive jurisprudence on this type of complaint and that the amounts proposed for payment by the Portuguese State were similar to other cases of this nature. Therefore, it refused to continue analyzing the issue and closed the case with the imposition of the compensation already accepted by Portugal.
