Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January-June 2007 79 Committee, and did not allow for the participation of independent experts. evidence, including most recently in a letter to AI dated 11 June. In this period the European Court of Human Rights found in two judgments that Moldova had violated the right to be free from torture and other ill-treatment. Update: Case of Vitalii Colibaba (see AI Index: EUR 01/017/2006) In the case of Istratii and others v. Moldova the Court found that Viorel Istratii had been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment because of inadequate medical treatment. On 12 November 2004, Viorel Istratii was detained along with two other people on suspicion of fraud. Between 12 November 2004 and 23 February 2005 Viorel Istratii was held in the detention centre of the Centre for Fighting Economic Crime and Corruption (CFECC) in the capital, Chişinău, and while there he suffered severe bowel problems requiring surgery. He was handcuffed to a radiator in the civilian hospital for a day while awaiting surgery, and then transferred to the prison hospital only four hours after the operation. In the case of Pruneanu v. Moldova, Ion Pruneanu alleged that he had been beaten on two separate occasions on 10 May 2001 and 10 July 2002 by officers from Călăraşi and Buiucani police stations. The European Court ruled that there had been a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights because the applicant had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment and the state had failed to conduct an effective investigation into the allegations of torture. Update: Case of Sergei Gurgurov (see AI Indexes: EUR 59/006/2005, EUR 59/007/2005 and EUR 01/017/2006) Sergei Gurgurov allegedly sustained head and spinal injuries at the hands of the police in Chişinău, and as of October 2005 he could only walk using crutches, talked with difficulty, and had impaired hearing in one ear. The Prosecutor General’s Office has repeatedly denied that there was any evidence of torture in the case of Sergei Gurgurov despite medical and audio-visual Amnesty International In the same letter of 11 June 2007, the Prosecutor General’s Office denied that there was any evidence of torture in the case of Vitalii Colibaba. Vitalii Colibaba had been arrested in April 2006 and allegedly suspended from a crowbar and beaten on the head and neck by three police officers until he lost consciousness. LGBT organization against discriminated In April, Chişinău City Hall denied permission to the LGBT organization, Gender Doc-M, to hold a gay pride march for the third year running. This decision was made despite a Supreme Court ruling in February that the refusal to allow Gender Doc-M to hold a march in April 2006 had been illegal. Violence against women According to the US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report published in June, Moldova failed to address complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials. The report referred to the failure to prosecute the director and several other employees of the the government Centre to Combat Trafficking in Persons for assisting a prominent trafficker to evade prosecution. In August 2006 the officials had been dismissed from their jobs. AI was concerned that despite the existence of witness protection programmes on paper, very few victims of trafficking were able to benefit from effective witness protection if they agreed to testify. Protection only applied in cases tried under the Law on the Prevention of Trafficking and only lasted as long as the case lasted; yet up to 70 per cent of trafficking cases were reclassified as soliciting cases thus incurring lesser sentences and depriving the witnesses of protection. The witness protection AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007