Report and Recommendations - Scottish Government

when questioned. The official text is only available in French but the Reviewunderstands that, fairly translated, the Court said this 20 :“With regard to the absence of a lawyer whilst he was in custody, theCourt draws attention to the fact that the right of any accused person tobe effectively defended by a lawyer… is one of the fundamentalelements of a fair trial (Salduz…)…It considers that in general for the purposes of article 6 of theConvention, a fair criminal trial requires the suspect to have thepossibility of legal assistance when placed in custody or on remand.…as soon as he is deprived of his freedom, an accused person musthave access to a lawyer regardless of the questioning that heundergoes… Indeed, a fair trial requires that the accused person haveaccess to the full range of services provided by the lawyer. In thisregard, discussion of the case, organisation of the defence, the questfor evidence in favour of the accused, preparation for questioning,support for an accused person in distress and monitoring of theconditions of detention are fundamental elements of the defence thatmust be freely exercised by the lawyer”.6.1.12 Assuming that little is to be read into the changes in wording contained in thethree paragraphs from “accused”, to “suspect” and then back to “accused”, theCourt makes it clear that anyone deprived of his/her liberty must have theopportunity of gaining access to a lawyer. There is much sense in thatapproach from the angle of legal theory. If a person has been arrested onsuspicion of having committed a crime, he/she may wish to instruct immediatesteps to demonstrate his/her innocence and secure his/her freedom. Thesemight include, for example, the ingathering of evidence to support an alibi orreal evidence such as CCTV recordings. The extent to which this is a realproblem, from an Article 6 viewpoint, in Scotland may be another matter. Butit follows from the Court’s decision that, to be Convention compliant, a20 at paras 30 - 32147