ECHR rules against Cyprus over asylum seeker held on security grounds for 13 months

Cyprus violated a Moroccan asylum seeker’s right to liberty by keeping him in immigration detention for 13½ months on national security grounds, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. The Strasbourg court found that his detention was not sufficiently connected to preventing unauthorised entry and lasted longer than reasonably required for that purpose. The information supporting the security suspicions remained unchanged, while the Court found no apparent steps to advance his asylum proceedings after he lodged a judicial challenge. In its unanimous judgment issued on 1 October, the Court awarded the applicant, identified as K.A., €5,000 in non-pecuniary damages. It rejected his separate complaint that the withholding of confidential evidence had denied him a fair opportunity to challenge his detention. K.A. was held at Menoyia detention centre from 10 January 2019 until 24 February 2020. The judgment is final. The authorities detained him on the day he applied for asylum after a cooperating foreign service flagged him as a “category B” suspect, indicating suspected operational activity in support of a terrorist group. Following interviews by Cypriot police and intelligence officers, the migration authorities ordered his detention on national security grounds. According to the Cyprus Administrative Court’s earlier judgment , he had entered Cyprus through the occupied areas in December 2018. Neither judgment identifies the foreign service or terrorist group, or records a terrorism conviction against him. Strasbourg found that the domestic authorities had been unclear about the purpose of his detention. The migration authorities and the Administrative Court repeatedly cited national security as a standalone justification, while other authorities and the Supreme Court linked his confinement to the examination of his asylum application. The Asylum Service had recognised him as a refugee in April 2019 but revoked that status on national security grounds and rejected his application for international protection. An administrative appeal upheld that decision in July 2019, and he challenged it before the Administrative Court for International Protection in October that year. The European Court noted that no further asylum interviews took place after the administrative decisions. When reviewing his continued detention, the migration authorities neither relied on new evidence nor sought additional information. The material underlying the suspicions remained unchanged throughout his confinement. It also found no apparent steps to advance the asylum proceedings after his challenge reached the international protection court, where the case remained pending. The Court concluded that there was no sufficiently close connection between his immigration detention and the prevention of unauthorised entry. The 13½-month period could not be regarded as reasonably required for that purpose, given the absence of evidence that his asylum claim was particularly complex and the lack of progress in the proceedings. It therefore found a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to liberty. K.A. had challenged the original detention order before the Administrative Court, which dismissed his case on 22 April 2019. That court considered his identification in a foreign terrorism database sufficient to justify detention and found that less restrictive measures would not adequately protect national security. He subsequently brought separate proceedings challenging the length of his detention. His first application was dismissed in August 2019, but a second succeeded on 24 February 2020. The Supreme Court ordered his release after finding that the State had supplied neither the material previously examined by the Administrative Court nor substantive evidence supporting its latest decision to continue detention. Without that evidence, it could not assess whether the grounds for his confinement still existed. His appeal against the April 2019 Administrative Court judgment continued after his release and was dismissed by the Supreme Constitutional Court in October 2024. On his complaint about confidential evidence, Strasbourg found no violation of Article 5 § 4, which guarantees the right to challenge the lawfulness of detention. The Court found that he had been informed of the legal basis and reasons for his detention, inspected relevant administrative material and been able, through his lawyer, to challenge the disclosed allegations. The independent Administrative Court had access to the confidential documents. It concluded that he had been given a reasonable opportunity to present his case. According to the judgment, K.A. now lives in the Larnaca district at an address known to the authorities. His challenge to the rejection of international protection remained pending.