Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 150
March 2012
Atmaca v. Germany (dec.) - 45293/06
Decision 6.3.2012 [Section V]
Article 37
Article 37-1-c
Continued examination not justified
Absence of real and imminent risk of extradition: struck out
Facts – The applicant, who was of Turkish and Armenian origin, had been detained and allegedly tortured in a Turkish military prison in the 1980s on account of his activities as a leading member of the Workers’ Party of Kurdistan (PKK). He entered Germany in 2005 and requested asylum, but was arrested and detained pursuant to a Turkish request for his extradition. He subsequently lodged an application with the European Court, which in October 2007 indicated under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court that the applicant should not be extradited until further notice. The German Ministry of Justice has not yet taken a decision on whether or not to authorise the applicant’s extradition. The applicant was released from detention pending extradition in April 2008. In February 2012, at the Court’s request, the German Government gave an undertaking that, if the Court discontinued the existing interim measure, they would allow the applicant to re-apply to the Court for further measures in the event that his extradition was subsequently authorised.
Law – Article 37 § 1 (c): The Court had to ascertain whether, in the light of the factual developments in the case since 2007, it was appropriate to strike the application out of its list. In that connection, it noted that, while it enjoyed a wide discretion in identifying grounds on which to strike out an application under Article 37 § 1 (c), the instant application differed from previous cases in which that provision had been applied in that there had been neither a lack of diligence on the applicant’s part nor any measures of redress by the domestic authorities. However, since the applicant could not be extradited without Ministry of Justice authorisation, and had been released from detention pending extradition and given an undertaking that he would have a real opportunity to re-apply to the Court for interim measures if his extradition was authorised in the future, he could not be considered to be facing a real and imminent risk of extradition. Moreover, if the Ministry were ultimately to refuse to authorise his extradition, the matter might then be resolved at the domestic level without the Court’s intervention, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. In these circumstances, the continued examination of the application was no longer justified.
Conclusion: struck out (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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