European Court of Human Rights

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

190

27.3.2007

Press release issued by the Registrar

Inter-state application brought by Georgia against the Russian Federation

On 26 March 2007 the Georgian authorities lodged with the Court’s Registry an application against the Russian Federation under Article 33 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The application concerns events following the arrest in Tbilisi (Georgia) on 27 September 2006 of four Russian service personnel on suspicion of espionage. On 4 October 2006 the four servicemen were released by executive act of clemency. Eleven Georgian nationals were arrested on the same charges.

The applicant Government maintain that the reaction of the Russian authorities to this incident amounted to a pattern of official conduct giving rise to specific and continuing breaches of the Convention and its Protocols under the following provisions: Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment), Article 5 (right to liberty), Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life), Article 13 (right to an effective remedy), Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), Article 18 (limitation on the use of restrictions on rights) of the Convention; Articles 1 (protection of property) and 2 (right to education) of Protocol No. 1; Article 4 (prohibition of collective expulsion of aliens) of Protocol No. 4 and Article 1 (procedural safeguards relating to expulsion of aliens) of Protocol No. 7.

These breaches are said to derive from alleged harassment of the Georgian immigrant population in the Russian Federation, including interferences with the respect for private and family life, home and correspondence, the peaceful enjoyment of possessions and the right to education together with widespread arrests and detention generating a generalised threat to security of the person and multiple interferences with the right to liberty on arbitrary grounds. The Georgian Government also complain of the conditions in which “at least 2,380 Georgians” had been detained. They assert that the collective expulsion of Georgians from the Russian Federation involved systematic and arbitrary interference with documents evidencing a legitimate right to remain, due process requirements and the statutory appeal process. In addition closing the land, air and maritime border between the Russian Federation and Georgia, thereby interrupting all postal communication, frustrated access to remedies for the persons affected.

Under Rule 51 of the Rules of Court, when an inter-state application is lodged the President of the Court is to give notice immediately to the respondent Contracting Party. The application is then assigned to one of the Court’s five Sections. A Chamber of seven judges is subsequently constituted within the Section, including as members the judges elected in respect of the States concerned, in this case the Georgian and Russian judges. Since it was set up in 1959, the Court has delivered judgment in only three inter-state cases: Ireland v. the United Kingdom (1978); Denmark v. Turkey (2000) and Cyprus v. Turkey (2001). A further 17 inter-state applications were dealt with by the former European Commission of Human Rights, which ceased to exist in 1999.

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Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30)

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.