site.btaEuropean Court of Human Rights Rules that Bulgaria Violated European Convention of Human Rights in Case Involving Turkish National Fleeing His Home Country

Brussels/Strasbourg, July 20 (BTA corr. Nikolay Jeliazkov)

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday ruled that
Bulgaria has violated Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman and
degrading treatment) and Article 13 (right to an effective
remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the ECHR
said in a press release.

The case concerned the arrest at the border between Bulgaria and
 Romania of a Turkish journalist claiming to be fleeing his home
 country fearing political persecution there, and his immediate
removal to Turkey. The events occurred three months after the
2016 attempted coup in Turkey.

Before the Court, the applicant complained that the Bulgarian
authorities had refused to initiate asylum proceedings and had
returned him to Turkey, thus exposing him to a real risk of
ill-treatment.

The Court held in particular that despite the fact that the
applicant had expressed fears that he might face ill-treatment
in the event of being returned to Turkey, the Bulgarian
authorities had not examined his application for international
protection.

The Court notes that, as far as procedural guarantees were
concerned, the applicant had neither been provided with the
assistance of an interpreter or translator, nor with information
 about his rights as an asylum seeker, including the relevant
procedures. Moreover, the applicant had not been granted access
to a lawyer or a representative of specialist organizations that
 would have helped him assess whether his circumstances entitled
 him to international protection. In addition, the Bulgarian
Ombudsman had not been consulted for the purpose of supervising
the removal of the foreign national in question, contrary to the
 express legal requirement to that effect.

The Court also observed other failings in the conduct of the
domestic proceedings. Such failings, in the Court's view,
reflected the extreme haste with which the applicant had been
removed, in addition to the fact that his removal had been in
breach of the rules of domestic law. As a result of such haste
and the failure to comply with the relevant domestic procedures,
 which had nevertheless been designed to offer protection
against the prospect of rapid removal without an examination of
individual circumstances, the applicant had been deprived in
practice of an assessment of the risk he allegedly faced in the
event of his return.

The Court held that Bulgaria was to pay the applicant 15,000
euro in respect of non-pecuniary damage. RI/ZH