Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 131
June 2010
Kamaliyevy v. Russia - 52812/07
Judgment 3.6.2010 [Section I]
Article 34
Hinder the exercise of the right of petition
Failure of the authorities to comply with an interim measure indicated by the Court under Rule 39: violation
Facts – The first applicant is a national of Uzbekistan who has lived in Russia since the late 1990s. He married the second applicant, a Russian national. In March 2006 the Deputy General Prosecutor of Uzbekistan requested the first applicant’s extradition on the ground that he was charged with belonging to an extremist religious organisation, incitement of religious hatred and attempted subversion of the constitutional regime. In December 2006 the Russian Deputy General Prosecutor refused to extradite him. In November 2007, during an identity check, the first applicant was arrested in Tyumen as an unlawfully resident alien. A district court found him guilty of a violation of the residence rules for aliens, in that he had failed to take any steps to get a residence permit or to obtain nationality by legal means. It imposed a fine and ordered his expulsion from Russia. On 3 December 2007 the first applicant applied to the European Court requesting suspension of his extradition to Uzbekistan. In view of the crimes he had been charged with there, he alleged that he would be exposed to a risk of torture. On the same day, the Court indicated to the Russian Government that, under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, it was adopting an interim measure suspending the extradition. On 5 December 2007 the first applicant was nevertheless deported to Uzbekistan, where he is currently serving a prison sentence.
Law – Article 34: The respondent Government had contended that, although the competent authorities had done everything in their power to comply with the measure indicated by the Court, the short notice and time difference between Strasbourg, Moscow and Tyumen had meant that the information had failed to reach the intended recipients before the expulsion had occurred. The Court noted, however, that the first applicant had been put on a plane about 26 hours after the notification of the interim measure to the respondent Government. That period had included one full working day, when all the relevant offices had been open and no difficulties in communication had been reported. While cognisant of the inevitable difficulties which arose when differences in time were involved, the Court considered that in the present case these had clearly not been of such a nature as to explain the failure to transmit the message to the service responsible. Indeed, in its first letter of 3 December 2007 the Court had already indicated the first applicant’s place of detention and it should have been relatively simple to identify the body responsible. The Court also remarked that the first applicant’s deportation had been upheld by the regional court and the necessary formalities to carry it out had been completed in an even shorter period of time. The Government had relied on the need to contact various ministries in Moscow and to obtain information from the local services before any steps could be ordered. The working day of 4 December 2007 had thus not been sufficient to comply with the measure indicated by the Court. The Court did not find such an excuse compatible with the nature of urgent requests aimed at preventing a person’s imminent deportation. By definition, these decisions were not complex to implement, since all that was needed was to inform the local authority responsible for carrying out the deportation and/or the administration of the detention centre of the temporary ban on the person’s removal from the territory of the Contracting State. In view of all the information in its possession, the Court was not satisfied that the Government had taken all reasonable steps to comply with the Court’s ruling. Nor had they shown that there had been an objective impediment to compliance with the interim measure indicated under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
The Court also found that there had been no violation of Article 8 (four votes to three).
Article 41: Reserved.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy