6.  The first applicant, Mr Kimlya, was born in 1977 and lives in Surgut in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region. He is the President of the Church of Scientology of Surgut City. 7.  The second applicant, Mr Sultanov, was born in 1965 and lives in Nizhnekamsk in the Republic of Tatarstan. He is a co-founder and member of the third applicant, the Church of Scientology of Nizhnekamsk, a religious group without legal-entity status. 8.  In 1994 the first centre for the study of Dianetics (the creed of the Church of Scientology) opened in Surgut and obtained State registration as a social non-governmental organisation under the name of “Surgut Humanitarian Dianetics Centre”. 9.  In 1995 a new Russian law on non-governmental associations was enacted. It required all non-governmental associations established before its entry into force to be re-registered before 1 July 1999. The Centre applied for re-registration; however, its application was refused on 23 July 1999 on the ground that the aims of the organisation were religious in nature. On 23 November 1999 the Justice Department of the Khanty-Mansi Region (“the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department”) sought a court decision terminating the Centre’s existence. 10.  The Centre applied for registration as a non-commercial partnership regulated by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. On 4 October 1999 the deputy mayor of Surgut Town Council rejected the application, referring to the religious purposes of the Centre. 11.  On 2 January 2000 the first applicant, in community with his fellow believers, resolved to found the “Scientology Group of Surgut City” and to hold regular services on Sundays. At a subsequent meeting on 1 July 2000, the first applicant and other believers passed a resolution to establish a local religious organisation, the Church of Scientology of Surgut City (“the Surgut Church”). 12.  On 15 August 2000 the ten founding members, including the first applicant, applied to the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department for registration as a local religious organisation having the status of a legal entity. 13.  On 14 September 2000 the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department refused registration in the following terms:
“You have failed to produce a document issued by a local authority certifying that the religious group has existed in the given territory for no less than fifteen years, or a document issued by the managing body of a centralised religious organisation certifying that the religious group is a branch of such an organisation, and this does not comply with the requirements of section 11(5) of the Federal Law on freedom of conscience and religious associations.
The refusal of registration does not prohibit a subsequent new application for registration provided that the grounds for the refusal have been removed.” 14.  On 17 October 2000 the first applicant appealed against that decision to the Khanty-Mansi Town Court. He alleged that his constitutional right to freedom of conscience had been violated and that his religious group had been discriminated against. Lacking the status of a legal entity, his religious group could not print, export or import religious books or articles of worship, own property, carry out charitable activities or found organisations for religious purposes. 15.  On 25 December 2000 the Khanty-Mansi Town Court dismissed the complaint. It held that the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department had correctly refused registration because the Surgut Church had failed to provide a document confirming it had been in existence in the region for at least fifteen years. As to the first applicant’s reliance on the Constitution, it held: “this reference ... is far-fetched and cannot be taken into consideration.” No further justification was provided. 16.  On 21 February 2001 the Khanty-Mansi Regional Court upheld the judgment of 25 December 2000. The court repeated that the applicant’s references to the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the Russian Constitution were “groundless”. 17.  Following a request by the first applicant, on 18 January 2002 the Presidium of the Khanty-Mansi Regional Court instituted supervisory-review proceedings, quashed the contested judgments and remitted the matter to the Khanty-Mansi Town Court for a fresh examination. It noted that the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department should have “left the application unexamined” until all the documents required by law had been produced. 18.  On 16 May 2002 the Khanty-Mansi Town Court commissioned an expert study of the religious teachings of the Surgut Church and stayed the proceedings in the case. On 24 July 2002 the Khanty-Mansi Regional Court upheld that decision on appeal. 19.  On 22 November 2004 the Khanty-Mansi Town Court resumed the proceedings and delivered a new judgment on the same day. It held that the refusal to register the Surgut Church had been unlawful because in the absence of a certificate showing its fifteen-year presence in the region, the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department should have left the application for registration “unexamined”. It ordered the Khanty-Mansi Justice Department to register the Surgut Church. 20.  On 18 January 2005 the Khanty-Mansi Regional Court quashed the judgment in so far as it concerned the order to register the Surgut Church, on the ground that the first applicant had not produced all the documents required by Law no. 125-FZ of 26 September 1997 (“the Religions Act”), a circumstance which the Regional Court considered to be an impediment to the registration of the Surgut Church as a legal entity. 21.  On 28 October 1998 the second applicant and fellow believers resolved to found the Church of Scientology of Nizhnekamsk as a local religious group. 22.  On 23 December 1999 the applicant church applied to the State Registration Chamber of the Republic of Tatarstan (“the Registration Chamber”) for registration as a local religious organisation. 23.  In a letter of 17 April 2000, the Registration Chamber informed the second applicant that the term for registration had been extended for six months from 13 January 2000 in order to allow the State authorities to carry out a religious expert examination. 24.  In a letter of 7 September 2001, a deputy chairperson of the Registration Chamber informed the president of the applicant church that the application for registration had been rejected as “there [had] so far been no conclusions from the religious expert examination to which the applicant church’s documents [had] been subjected”. 25.  The second applicant appealed to a court against the refusal of registration. 26.  On 21 December 2001 the Nizhnekamsk Town Court of the Republic of Tatarstan dismissed the second applicant’s claim, arguing that there was no actual dispute as the authorities had yet to carry out the religious expert examination and the application for registration had yet to be examined on the merits. 27.  On 21 January 2002 the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan (“the Supreme Court”) quashed the judgment of 21 December 2001 and remitted the claim to the Town Court for a fresh examination. 28.  On 7 March 2002 the Town Court again dismissed the second applicant’s claim. It found that the refusal had been justified because internal Order no. 254 issued by the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation on 19 June 1996 prohibited the use of Scientology methods in health services. 29.  On 18 April 2002 the Supreme Court quashed the judgment of 7 March 2002 and remitted the matter to the Town Court. It found that the absence of a religious expert examination was not a valid ground for the refusal of registration and that an internal order issued by a ministry was hierarchically subordinate to Russian laws and could not have been relied upon to restrict citizens’ rights. 30.  On 28 May 2002 the Town Court granted the second applicant’s claim and found that the refusal to register the applicant church had been unlawful. It noted that the application for registration had been made in December 1999, but that “the religious organisation [had] still not been registered owing to contrived reasons, although the federal law contain[ed] an exhaustive list of grounds on which registration [could] be refused”. It also held that there was no doubt as to “the religious nature of the organisation being registered”, that a religious expert examination was not mandatory and that the absence of such an examination could not be cited as a ground for refusing registration as this would encroach on citizens’ rights. On 4 July 2002 the Supreme Court upheld the judgment. 31.  In the meantime, on 1 July 2002 the power to approve the registration of religious organisations was transferred from the Registration Chamber to the Main Department of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Tatarstan (“the Tatar Justice Department”). Accordingly, on 25 July 2002 the application for registration of the applicant church and related documents were also transferred to the Tatar Justice Department. 32.  On 13 August 2002 the Town Court forwarded a copy of its judgment of 28 May 2002 to the Justice Department for execution. However, the Tatar Justice Department refused to proceed with the registration on the ground that it was not the legal successor to the Registration Chamber. 33.  The second applicant asked the Town Court to clarify the judgment of 28 May 2002 specifically as to which authority was to execute the judgment in view of the fact that the power of the Registration Chamber to register religious organisations had been transferred to the Tatar Justice Department with effect from 1 July 2002 further to a change in the law. 34.  On 4 September 2002 the applicant church again requested the Tatar Justice Department to grant it legal-entity status, pursuant to the judgment of 28 May 2002. 35.  On 10 October 2002 the Town Court held that no clarification of the judgment was required as “no ambiguity could be found in the judgment”. It also noted that, in the event of improper execution of a court judgment or a violation of the second applicant’s rights by other State officials, he could lodge a complaint with a court on “general grounds”. 36.  The second applicant appealed against the decision of 10 October 2002 to the Supreme Court. However, it appears that the appeal was never examined as by that time the case file had been forwarded to the President of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan in connection with the application for supervisory review lodged by the Tatar Justice Department (see paragraphs 38-39 below). 37.  On 14 October 2002 the second applicant sued the Tatar Justice Department for its failure to comply with the final judgment of 28 May 2002 and to register the applicant church. It appears that this action was subsequently stayed in connection with the supervisory-review proceedings described below. 38.  On 16 October 2002 the head of the Tatar Justice Department wrote to a vice-president of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan, requesting him to exercise his supervisory-review powers in respect of the judgment of 28 May 2002 with a view to quashing it. 39.  On 12 November 2002 the President of the Supreme Court lodged an application for supervisory review with the Presidium of the court. On 27 November 2002 the Presidium granted the application, quashed the judgments of 28 May and 4 July 2002 and referred the matter back for a fresh examination. It found that a religious expert examination was a mandatory precondition for State registration of a little-known religious organisation such as the applicant church. 40.  On 28 November 2002 the Expert Council on State Religious Evaluation of the Council on Religious Affairs, a body attached to the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Tatarstan, submitted its opinion concerning the applicant church further to a request by the Tatar Justice Department. It concluded that Scientology was a religion. However, it did not recommend registration of the applicant church because it had only recently been established in the Republic of Tatarstan. 41.  On 8 January 2003 the Tatar Justice Department ruled that the application for registration should be left “unexamined” in the absence of a document confirming the applicant church’s presence in the Republic of Tatarstan for fifteen years. 42.  On 25 February 2003 the Town Court carried out a fresh determination of the second applicant’s claim. It found as follows:
“[The second applicant] considers that the refusal of registration was unlawful and that it violated his right to freedom of conscience and religion. The court cannot agree ... Neither [the second applicant] nor anyone else is prohibited or prevented from professing Scientology individually or in community with others. The refusal to grant legal-entity status to an organisation may only violate a citizen’s right to freedom of association ...
The court has established that persons professing Scientology appeared in the town of Nizhnekamsk in the late 1990s. In 1999 the group comprising [the second applicant] decided to establish the religious organisation Church of Scientology of Nizhnekamsk and register it as a legal entity ... The Registration Chamber refused registration by reference to the absence of an opinion resulting from a religious expert examination. [The second applicant] complained to a court ... While the case was being examined, the power to approve registration of the religious organisation was transferred to the [Tatar] Justice Department, which ... left the application for registration unexamined, referring to the fact that the religious group had existed in the town of Nizhnekamsk for less than fifteen years ...
The ground preventing registration is the fact that the religious group has existed for less than fifteen years. Admittedly, pursuant to section 11 of the Religions Act, this ground can be invoked to leave the application unexamined rather than to refuse registration; however, in either case registration of the organisation is not possible. Hence, given that the outcome of the decision by the Registration Chamber is correct (the organisation may not be registered), the court cannot use a formal pretext to require the [Tatar] Justice Department to breach the Religions Act and register the organisation, especially taking into account that [the Tatar Justice Department] has already corrected the Registration Chamber’s mistake and issued a decision in conformity with the Religions Act.” 43.  On 3 April 2003 the Supreme Court upheld that judgment. 44.  On 28 May 2003 the Town Court dismissed the second applicant’s action against the Tatar Justice Department for its failure to execute the judgment of 28 May 2002 (see above). The court found that the judgment in the second applicant’s favour had been quashed by way of supervisory-review proceedings and that the Supreme Court’s final judgment of 3 April 2003 had removed any basis for requiring the Tatar Justice Department to register the applicant church. On 3 July 2003 the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan upheld on appeal the judgment of 28 May 2003. 45.  In October 2004, jurisdiction over the registration of religious organisations was transferred to the newly created Federal Registration Service. The second applicant sought registration from the local office of this new body. On 18 February 2005 the Chief Directorate of the Federal Registration Service for Tatarstan declined to consider the matter, referring the applicant church to the Tatar Justice Department’s earlier refusals to register it on the basis of the “fifteen-year rule”.