CASE OF LJATIFI v. "THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA"
Violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 7 - Procedural safeguards relating to expulsion of aliens;Non-pecuniary damage - award (Article 41 - Non-pecuniary damage;Just satisfaction)
Aleš Pejchal;Armen Harutyunyan;Krzysztof Wojtyczek;Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos;Ksenija Turković
6. The applicant was born in 1991 and lives in Skopje. 7. In 1999 the applicant (eight years old at the time) and her family (parents and three siblings) fled Kosovo and settled in the respondent State, where she has been living ever since. In 2005 she was granted asylum and a residence permit. She entered into a common-law partnership with a Macedonian national, with whom she has three minor children (the children also have Macedonian nationality). Her residence permit was extended each year until 3 February 2014, when the Ministry of the Interior terminated her asylum, holding that she was “a risk to [national] security.” The decision was preceded by an interview at which the applicant, who had been legally represented, had confirmed her family situation and her intention to marry her partner. That the applicant represented a security risk was not discussed at the interview. The decision further stated: “[the applicant] is obliged to leave the respondent State within twenty days of receipt of the final decision.” 8. The applicant, through her lawyer, challenged the decision as arbitrary. She argued that there was no evidence that her presence in the respondent State represented a threat to national security. Furthermore, she had not been given an opportunity to challenge any such evidence. 9. On 3 July 2014 the Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s appeal and upheld the decision of the Ministry, noting that the latter had obtained a classified written note (службена белешка со назнака за доверлив документ) from the Security and Counter Intelligence Agency (“the Intelligence Agency”) indicating that she represented a threat to national security. The court did not provide any further details regarding that document. It ruled accordingly that the impugned proceedings had been lawful. 10. The applicant’s representative appealed against that decision before the Higher Administrative Court, reiterating the arguments raised previously. She further alleged that the wording used by the Administrative Court implied that there were some documents on which the impugned decision had been based. However, she had not been given an opportunity to have knowledge of or to comment on that evidence. 11. By a decision of 1 July 2015, served on the applicant on 6 October 2015, the Higher Administrative Court dismissed the applicant’s appeal and upheld the Ministry’s decision. The relevant part of the decision reads as follows: “... [The Ministry] decided on the basis of ... classified information obtained from a relevant body (which) proves indisputably that her presence in (the respondent State) represents a threat to its security. The Higher Administrative Court has examined the (applicant’s) allegations ... that information provided by the relevant body within the Ministry of the Interior was not forwarded to her and her representative, but it considers them irrelevant ...” 12. In the proceedings before the Court, the Government submitted a redacted version of the classified note that the Intelligence Agency had sent on 19 September 2013 to the Ministry of the Interior. The relevant parts of the note read as follows: “... following security checks of [the applicant], it has been established that recognition of her asylum status would be a threat to the (national) security of the [respondent State]. It has been established that her (hidden text) ... are perpetrators of tens of crimes (serious thefts, thefts and acts of concealment). The applicant was aware of and supported all crimes committed by her (hidden text) ... She has also been living in a common-law partnership with M.M. in order to obtain the monetary allowance to which she was entitled having been granted asylum. In such circumstances, we are of the opinion that she should not be granted asylum in [the respondent State].” 13. On 11 November 2015 the Ministry granted a request by the applicant to leave the respondent State in order to obtain, as she had stated, documents from the Serbian authorities for marrying her common-law partner in the respondent State. She was allowed re-entry to the respondent State in January 2016, which was one month after the expiry of the timelimit for returning to the respondent State. In February 2016 she contacted the Ministry with a view to submitting the relevant documents.