The continuation of a long administrative course. The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday took a “provisional measure”, that is, an emergency measure, obliging France not to deport a Chechen to Russia, considering that he could be tortured there.
The Chechen, born in 1980, alleged before the ECHR that he was arrested in 2004 in Russia, interrogated and tortured on several occasions for his alleged links with members of the Chechen insurgency.
Released in favor of an amnesty, he said he then lived in hiding, before entering France in 2014. He and his wife obtained refugee status in 2018 from the National Court of Asylum Law (CNDA), a status that was later withdrawn in 2019. .after the director general of Ofpra (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) filed an appeal for review.
In 2020, the prefect of Morbihan formulated the obligation to leave French territory for the couple and set Russia as the country of destination.
“This decision does not contravene the provisions of article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights,” the prefect wrote at the time. “Reported file. Provide escort on arrival,” he also said. His decision had been upheld by the Rennes Administrative Court and then by the Nantes Administrative Court of Appeal.
Risks of abuse
But the European magistrates unanimously considered that the French courts “had not sufficiently assessed the risks of ill-treatment” to which the Chechen would be exposed if he were returned to Russia.
They ruled that such return would constitute a “violation of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, according to which “no one may be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment.”
Therefore, they decided on a “provisional measure”, an emergency measure that requires “that the applicant not be expelled”. France has three months to appeal and bring the case before the Grand Chamber, the highest body of the ECHR.
In its ruling, the ECHR cites several documents from the US State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch alleging the use of torture by Russian authorities against people detained in Russia.
According to Amnesty International, a number of people deported from European countries, including France, to Russia were victims of enforced disappearance and torture upon arrival in Chechnya.
the european court of human rights condemned France in August for the expulsion of two Russians of Chechen origin, whose refugee status had been revoked, given the possible risks of ill-treatment suffered in Russia.
Source: BFM TV
