Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt that the relevant passages in the judgment issued against other suspects and concerning the involvement of the applicant in the fraudulent use of the donated funds (which was also the subject of the parallel criminal investigations instituted against the applicant), notwithstanding such statements were not binding with respect to the applicant, may have a prejudicial effect on the proceeding against him. In particular, the Court considered that in the above case, since the applicant was prosecuted separately, he was not a party to the proceeding against the co-accused and was therefore deprived of any possibility of contesting the allegations made during this proceeding as to his involvement in the crime. However, the Court acknowledged that in order to assess the responsibility of the co-suspects, the local court could not avoid mentioning and evaluating the role and the intentions of all of the persons “behind the scene” in Turkey, including the applicant, and consequently, there had not been an infringement of Article 6 (2). The decision was not unanimous and two judges delivered a dissenting opinion stating that, actually, the decision of the local court was an infringement of Article 6 (2). In spite of the two opposed opinions, it seems that the decision of the ECHR could hardly be disputed and that an infringement of Article 6 (2) could occur only if statements as to the guilt of a person who is not a party in a criminal proceeding, are made without giving reason for that. Otherwise, it would be impossible to try defendants in those criminal proceedings (for instance, for the crime of criminal association) where, due to various reasons, not all accused could be tried (as the inability to try them in absentia or to notify some of the defendants about the start of the trial, or, because the investigation of some suspects has been completed, while for others it has been not). It would be necessary, though, to assess the responsibility of those suspects who are not subjects to trial, in order to make the decisions about the guilt of those defendants who are on trial. In the case of Butkevicius644 the Chairman of the Lituanian Parliament released a press statement saying that the Minister of Defence, who was just arrested in a hotel lobby after accepting an envelope full of US dollars, had taken a bribe and that he had no doubt the Minister was corrupt. The Court stated that these remarks amounted to statements made by a public official of the applicant’s guilt, which is a violation of Article 6 (2). More specifically, the Court recalled that the presumption of innocence enshrined in Article 6 (2) of the Convention is one of the elements of a fair criminal trial and that the above principle is violated by a statement of a public official concerning a person charged with a criminal offence, asserting that the above individual is guilty before being proven so by law. Although the impugned remarks of the Chairman were brief and made on separate occasions, in the Court’s opinion they amounted to declarations about the applicant’s guilt made by a public official, which could induce 644 146 Butkevicius v. Lithuania, no. 48297/99, ECHR, 26.06.2002.