The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR) has ruled in the widely publicised case of the ill-treatment of Roma boys at the police station in Košice in 2009. According to the ECtHR, the Slovak courts heard the case for an unreasonably long time. Moreover, they did not sufficiently examine the alleged humiliating treatment by the police, nor did they sufficiently deal with the racial motive alleged by the prosecution. The proceedings before the Constitutional Court, to which the applicants repeatedly appealed, were found by the ECtHR to be ineffective. The ECtHR awarded each of the complainants damages of €20,000. From the beginning of the case, the complainants were represented by a lawyer cooperating with the non-governmental organisation, the Center for Civil and Human Rights (Poradňa).