ECtHR - K.I. v. Russia (application no. 58182/14) [Articles 3 and 5(4) ECHR], 7 November 2017

Date: 
Friday, November 10, 2017

On 7 November 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in case K.I. v. Russia (application no. 58182/14), which concerned a Tajik national who was charged in absentia in Tajikistan with participating in an extremist religious movement. Following his detention and his unsuccessful application for international protection, Russian authorities took final decisions to remove the applicant to Tajikistan despite his consistent claims that he would be subject to a real risk of treatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR.

The ECtHR reaffirmed its previous jurisprudence that the removal of applicants to Tajikistan in the face of their prosecution for extremism would run contrary to Article 3 ECHR by exposing them to a risk of ill-treatment at the hands of the law-enforcement agencies in that country. The ECtHR also found that the national authorities and courts had failed to carry out a rigorous scrutiny of the applicant’s claim and that the decisions lacked reference to evidentiary material. Therefore, the ECtHR found a violation of Article 3 ECHR.

In relation to the applicant’s complaint under Article 5(1) ECHR, the Court found that the applicant’s detention had lasted less than eight months and, during that period, the Russian authorities had taken genuine steps to decide on his extradition. Therefore, the ECtHR found no violation of Article 5(1) ECHR.

However, the Court did find a violation of Article 5(4) ECHR since it did not find that the applicant’s detention complied with the speediness requirement. The Russian government had argued that the duration of the proceedings could not be attributable to national courts, but to the contracted translation agency which had taken a long time to translate materials from Russian to Tajik. The ECtHR rejected this claim and affirmed that the courts, in entering into a contractual relationship with the translation agency, should have taken appropriate care to ensure that the translation requests would be processed diligently.



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Keywords: 
Detention
Inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment