Muhammad v. Spain, No. 34085/17, ECtHR (Third Section), 18 October 2022

Racial profiling by police during identity check on a street. No violation of Article 14 read in conjunction with Article 8 ECHR.

Art. 8 ECHR
Art. 14 ECHR

1. Not every identity check of a person belonging to an ethnic minority attains the necessary threshold of severity so as to fall within the scope of the right to respect for private life (Article 8 ECHR). That threshold is only attained if the person concerned has an arguable claim that he or she may have been targeted on account of specific physical or ethnic characteristics.

2. In cases where it is claimed that a person may have been subjected to an identity check by the police because of physical or ethnic characteristics and such acts fall into the ambit of Article 8 ECHR, national authorities have a duty under Article 14 ECHR to carry out effective and independent investigations into whether the identity check was racially motivated. 

3. Neither the applicant’s argument of having been subjected to an identity check based on race nor statistics data demonstrating the practice of racially motivated identity checks in the country concerned are sufficient to prove the discriminatory grounds for the police check.

(In the instant case, the applicant, a Pakistan national with long-term residency in Spain, complained that he had been subjected to an identity check by the police only because of his skin colour, and that Spanish authorises had failed to carry out sufficient and effective investigations into his allegations of having suffered racial discrimination. According to the police officers, the applicant referred to them using disrespectful language, which was the reason why they requested to see his identity documents. The European judges held that there had been no violation of Article 14 ECHR taken in conjunction with Article 8 ECHR, as regards both the applicant’s complaints. On the one hand, the applicant had been able to challenge the domestic courts’ decisions, which had been sufficiently reasoned and motivated. On the other, there was no reason for the Court to find that the identity check had been motivated by racism).