Tajik man jailed in Russia wins case in European Court of Human Rights

AKIPRESS.COM - The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg considered the case Usmanov v. Russia on December 22, which concerned a national of Tajikstan's complaint about decisions to revoke his Russian citizenship and remove him from Russian territory.
Usmanov was granted Russian citizenship in 2008, but it was revoked ten years later when the authorities discovered that he had omitted the names of his brothers and sisters in his application. The decision to expel him had been taken after he refused to leave the country.
The European Court of Human Rights held that there had been violations of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights as concerned both the revocation of the applicant's Russian citizenship and the decision to expel him from Russian territory.
Overall, the Court considered that the authorities' decisions in the applicant's case had been overly formalistic, failing to duly balance the interests at stake. In particular, they had not shown why the applicant's failure to submit information about some of his siblings had been so grave that it was justified to deprive him of his Russian citizenship so many years after he had obtained it. Nor had they taken into account the fact that he had been living in Russia for a considerable period of time with a Russian national, with whom he had four children, and that during his stay he had not committed any offences.
The European Court of Human Rights found that revoking Usmonov's citizenship had interfered with his rights under Article 8 of the Convention. He had been deprived of any legal status in Russia and left without any valid identity documents. The Court noted in particular that Russian citizens had to prove their identity unusually often in their everyday life, from buying a train ticket to more crucial needs suchas finding employment or receiving medical care. The revocation of the applicant's citizenship had moreover been a precondition for the decisions to impose the entry ban and to remove him from Russia.
The Government agreed that there had been an interference with the applicant's rights, but argued that the legislative rules had not left any discretion to the authorities in situations where a person had omitted information in their application for Russian citizenship. After it had been established that the information submitted by the applicant had been incomplete, the authorities had therefore had no choice but to annul the decision granting him Russian citizenship, irrespective of the time elapsed since the obtaining of citizenship, the strength of his ties with Russia, his family situation or other important factors. The Court found that such an approach had been excessively formalistic. It had been fostered by the legal framework, as in force at the time, and had resulted in a failure to give the applicant adequate protection against arbitrary interference.
The Court held that Russia was to pay the applicant 162 euros (EUR) in respect of pecuniary damage, EUR 10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR 850 in respect of costs and expenses.
In April 2018 the Federal Security Service decided to issue a 35-year ban on Usmonov's entering Russia because he posed a threat to national security. He was supposed to leave the country before 17 August 2018. He was arrested in November 2018 and placed in a temporary detention centre for foreigners for failing to comply with the order for him to leave the country, where he was held for 2 years.
Usmonov was released after the European Court of Human Rights made the decision in his favor.