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On 9 July 2013, the police in Zagreb received an emergency call informing them that two men were attacking a man and a woman. The victims were both told to be people from the Rom*nja group.

The police report confirmed insults against the applicant and her partner based on their belonging to the Rom*nja, as well as physical assaults in the form of beatings and stabbings by the two attackers.

In a police interview on 9 July 2013, the applicant’s partner confirmed his Rom*nja origin. He testified that he had been bumped into by strangers at a flea market on the day of the crime. He had advised his partner to ignore the two young men because they were drunk. As a result, he had received very derogatory comments because of his Rom*nja affiliation. Out of panic, he pulled a knife out of his pocket to chase the two men away. The situation then escalated and both the applicant and he tried to flee after one of the attackers also pulled out a knife. However, the attackers held the partner and started to beat him. The applicant  wanted to come to her partner’s aid and had then also been beaten. The attackers continued to beat the partner and shouted that he should be killed because of his Rom*nja origin.

The attackers claimed in their interrogations on 9 July 2013 that the applicant’s partner had attacked them with the accusation of being drunk and that the conflict was not racially motivated.

On 10 June 2013, the police filed a complaint against the attackers. They based this on the suspicion of a hate crime with physical injuries as a result of the victim’s Rom*nja affiliation. The applicant was only cited as a witness.

During a hearing by the Criminal Court in Zagreb on 9.10.2014, the applicant’s partner confirmed his testimony. When asked whether the attackers also made negative comments about the applicant’s origin, the interviewee was no longer sure and claimed that his partner had said to him that the attackers had made comments to her to the effect that she would also be a Romni if she were with a Rom. The court found the two attackers guilty and imposed an 18-month prison sentence on each.

Meanwhile, the applicant and her partner filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office listing both the partner and the applicant as victims of hate crime.

However, the complaint was rejected by the prosecutor’s office on the grounds that the applicant could not be attacked on the basis of her Rom*nja origin, as she herself was not a Rom*nja. The applicant complained to the EctHR about the refusal of the Croatian authorities to recognise her as a victim of a racially motivated act of violence. She invoked Articles 3, 8 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Croatian government claimed that the applicant had turned to the ECtHR too early and had not yet exhausted all domestic remedies. However, the ECtHR rejected all of the Croatian government’s reservations.

The applicant argued before the ECtHR that Croatian law does not provide protection to individuals who are victims of discrimination by being associated with a person with certain protected characteristics. She also complained that the Croatian authorities had disregarded the racist implications of the attack.