It’s not that important to Vitalie Colibaba, yesterday’s winner at the European Court Human Rights (ECHR), how much money the Government will pay him for damages. Colibaba expects recognition of the fact that his rights were indeed violated and that he suffered at the hands of police, Roman Zadoinov, lawyer for Colibaba, told a news conference today. Zadoinov said that, at first, the plaintiff claimed reparations of 70,000 euros, but then asked the Court to pronounce an “equitable” judgment, as the money will not be paid out of the guilty people’s pockets but from the public coffers. The lawyer went on to add that his client is still suffering the consequences of the arrest, as a result of the inhumane treatment and torture applied by the police officers. In his words, the beating he had been subjected to drove him to a nervous breakdown. He suffered a hearing impairment, head trauma, and even attempted suicide. The lawyer remarked that his client is still in need of medical attention, and that is why he couldn’t make it to the news conference. It is important that yesterday’s judgment of the Strasbourg Court has proven that the authorities here in Moldova do not pay the required attention to instances of torture and ill-treatment while in police custody, Roman Zadoinov concluded. Vitalie Colibaba was arrested in April 2006 on suspicion of assaulting a police officer. He claimed that a couple of days after his arrest he was tortured and forced into confessing to the charge. Shortly after Colibaba lodged a complaint with ECHR, the Moldovan Prosecutor General wrote a letter to the Moldovan Bar Association in which he warned that the Prosecutor General’s Office was to examine whether it would bring criminal proceedings against the plaintiff’s lawyer. To date, Colibaba’s guilt hasn’t been proven. The Government in Chisinau was found guilty of violating human rights in about 90 cases examined in Strasbourg, and was obliged to pay damages of about 1.5 million euros, which is the equivalent of more than 24 million lei. About one thousand applications from Moldovan nationals are waiting for their turn to be examined by the Court, which, according to some experts, is the highest number of applications per capita of population.