The European Court of Human Rights does not oppose France’s expulsion of a Chechen to Russia

This man was convicted in July 2015 for advocating terrorism and threatening a crime and an act of intimidation against a public service official.

France would not violate the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights by expelling a Russian of Chechen origin to Russia, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday February 15. The Court was seized by a 55-year-old man, who arrived in France in 2009 and was recognized as a refugee in May 2012, but whose refugee status had been revoked due to the serious threat to state security posed by his presence. In France.

In July 2015, this man was sentenced by the Strasbourg criminal court to an eight-month prison sentence for advocating terrorism and threatening a crime and an act of intimidation against a public service official. This conviction was confirmed in September 2015 by the Court of Appeal of Colmar (Haut-Rhin) which increased the sentence to one year of imprisonment and also sentenced him to a permanent ban from French territory.

Risks of torture not demonstrated

Threatened with deportation to Russia, he filed a request with the ECHR, the judicial arm of the Council of Europe, in December 2020, claiming that his return to this country would expose him to the risk of torture. But the Court considers that he has not demonstrated that there were serious and proven reasons to believe that, if he were returned to Russia, he would run a real and present risk of being subjected to such treatment, contrary Article 3 of the Convention relating to the Prohibition of Torture.

The Court emphasizes in particular that his name does not appear on the list of people wanted by the Russian authorities for terrorist or extremist activities, that Russia has never requested his extradition from France, nor has it opened legal proceedings against him. against him.

The ECHR also notes that the French authorities carried out, at each stage of the procedure for implementing the removal measure to Russia, a complete and in-depth examination of his situation. It concludes that the execution of this measure of removal of the applicant would not constitute a violation of Article 3 of the Convention. It also declares inadmissible the complaints relating to the house arrest to which he was subject, because he has not exhausted domestic remedies.