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Minors can be held in custody in Switzerland

The Lausanne-based Federal Court said minors could only be held in custody in exceptional cases, Keystone

Children aged 10-15 can be held in custody under exceptional circumstances, the Federal Court has ruled.

Switzerland’s highest court has confirmed an earlier ruling by a Geneva court against a 12-year-old Romanian boy, who had been arrested on suspicion of taking part in a burglary and held in custody.

The young boy, who did not attend school, lived with his grandmother in a camp in neighbouring France. He was arrested in Geneva on December 9, 2013, accused of scouting locations to burgle but refused to confirm to police where exactly he lived.

He was then placed in custody in a specialised local institution for minors, where he spent Christmas and New Year.

Convicted of attempted theft, the boy was not sentenced and released one month after his arrest. His lawyer appealed against the decision to place the boy in custody, which he considered illegal, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In an official ruling published on Friday, the Federal Court in Lausanne recalled that it is impossible to sanction minors under 15 by sending them to prison. But it said that placing a minor under 15 in temporary custody was legal.

Exceptional cases

Under Swiss juvenile criminal law, remand detention concerns can hold children aged 10-18 and not just those aged 15-18, the court said. This measure should only be authorised in exceptional cases, after all alternatives have been examined, the court added.

It said this particular case was legal as the young Romanian boy had not been in possession of his identity papers. He had also refused to say where he lived abroad and his parents were not in Switzerland. There had therefore been a risk that he might have run away.

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SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR