Case summaries

Russia had failed to substantially and effectively examine the repeated claims of the applicants that their extradition would constitute a violation of Article 3 ECHR. Given the current situation in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and the individual circumstances of the applicants, a number of violations were found.

The French National Court on Asylum has made an error of law by refusing to grant at the very least subsidiary protection to the applicant following his new request to re-examine his situation, despite a condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for the violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). 

After being notified of his return decision, set to take place on the same day, the applicant requested an interim measure on Article 3 ECHR grounds in the morning but was nonetheless expelled to Morocco in the afternoon. The Court found no violation of Article 3, regarding the applicant’s expulsion to Morocco, by taking into account subsequent information. It found a violation of Article 34 of the Convention, owing to the fact that the applicant had no sufficient time to file a request to the Court, hence running the risk back then of being potentially subjected to treatment prohibited by the Convention.

The applicant, an Algerian national convicted in France for terrorism and banned from entering French territory in 2006, was sent back to Algeria in 2014, on the day he was notified of the rejection of his asylum claim and of the issuance of his return order. The Court found that the French authorities violated Article 34 of the Convention by carrying out the applicant’s transfer despite the Court’s interim measure. It also found that France violated Article 3, in the light of the general information regarding the situation of people suspected of international terrorism in Algeria.

The impossibility to proceed with an asylum applicant’s transfer to another Member State responsible for examining the asylum application  is established once there is a clear and real risk for the interested party to be subject to torture or inhuman or degrading treatments within the meaning of articles 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and 4 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFREU), even in the absence of having serious reasons to believe there are systemic failures in the Member State’s asylum system. 

The applicant appealed the Migration Court’s decision to dismiss his application for asylum on grounds of the availability of an internal protection alternative in the applicants home country of Afghanistan.

The Migration Court of Appeal granted the appeal as it was held that the question of internal protection can only be assessed after the court has made an individual assessment of the original grounds for protection invoked by the applicant.
 

The Court indicated interim measures (under Rule 39) to Russia after the order of removal of a Syrian national who applied for asylum after the expiry of his student visa. Subsequently, the applicant applied to the Court against the Russian Federation claiming that Russia had breached his rights under Articles 2, 3, 5(1)(f) and 5(4) of the Convention.

Prospective extradition of Applicants, members of an established vulnerable group under ECtHR, to a country where the risk of ill-treatment is real shall trigger a violation of Article 3 ECHR. Detention orders not meeting Article 5§1(f) ECHR objective threshold are and should be deemed as unlawful. The plurality of domestic remedies with the same objective does not prescribe their use by the Applicant for the purposes of Article 35§1 ECHR.

The Immigration and Asylum Office unlawfully rejected the claimant’s application for international protection. The court found that the authorities did not objectively assess the evidence and country information provided by the claimant, a Coptic Christian from Egypt. They also failed to correctly interpret the definition of a refugee in accordance with international law and disregarded the special status of the claimant who was an underage applicant.