Further, he was not offered any physical rehabilitation treatment required because of his disability. The applicant notified the prosecutor’s office of conditions of his detention. However, the latter refused to investigate the issue, and the court dismissed his appeal against the prosecutorial refusal.
The applicant was detained since 2001. He is paralysed and claims that he developed serious health problems in detention. All this made it even more urgent to provide him with adequate personal hygiene products and medical accessories which, as the applicant argues, were given to him too rarely considering his needs.
In performing personal hygiene activities the applicant was forced to ask his co-detainees for assistance. The applicant also claims that the prison facilities were not adjusted to his needs, for example, they were not adapted to the use of a wheelchair. In light of the above, the applicant invoked the violation of Article 3 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, prohibiting the use of torture and other forms of inhuman treatment.
‘This is yet another case against Poland which raises the issue of improper medical assistance in prison facilities and remand centres. The applications touches upon a very serious problem of securing proper conditions of imprisonment for disabled detainees’, says Maria Ejchart, an expert with the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights.
