CASE OF AKHADOV v. SLOVAKIA
Violation of Article 5 - Right to liberty and security (Article 5-4 - Speediness of review)
Alvina Gyulumyan;Ján Šikuta;Johannes Silvis;Josep Casadevall;Kristina Pardalos;Luis López Guerra
5. The applicant was born in 1965 and, at the material time, lived in Žilina. 6. On 26 June 2009 the applicant went to the offices of the Asylum Authority in Gbely with the intention of applying for asylum in Slovakia. From there, he was escorted to the Foreigners Police Department in Bratislava, where he arrived at about 3 p.m. 7. Following questioning on the same day, that is to say on 26 June 2009, the Foreigners Police Department decided to detain (zaistenie) the applicant, finding, inter alia, that he was staying in Slovakia without a valid travel document or any legal entitlement, and in spite of a previous decision expelling him from Slovakia and banning him from returning there for five years. 8. Under the detention order of 26 June 2009, the applicant was detained in the Alien Detention Centre in Medveďov. 9. On 16 July 2009 the Trnava Regional Court (Krajský súd) received a submission dated 13 July 2009 in which the applicant applied for judicial review of the order of 26 June 2009, challenging the assessment of the facts and the interpretation and application of the law by the police. 10. On 13 August 2009 the Regional Court held a hearing at which the applicant was not present in person but was represented by his lawyer. At the conclusion of the hearing, on the same day and in the presence of the applicants’ lawyer, the Regional Court dismissed the claim. 11. The written version of the judgment of 13 August 2009 was sent out on 27 August 2009 and served on the applicant on 7 September 2009. 12. On 2 November 2009 the applicant lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court (Ústavný súd), relying on Article 127 of the Constitution (individual complaint) and Article 5 § 4 of the Convention (speedy review of the lawfulness of detention), and complaining about the length of the proceedings in respect of his application dated 13 July 2009. 13. On 16 December 2009 the Constitutional Court declared the complaint inadmissible as being manifestly ill-founded. It observed, on the one hand, that the Regional Court had granted the police as long as fifteen days to submit observations in reply to the applicant’s claim, which the Constitutional Court held to have been disproportionately long. However, overall, the decision-making process in respect of the applicant’s claim had lasted only twenty-nine days, and not thirty-one days, as argued by the applicant. On that account, the Constitutional Court observed that the period under consideration had not commenced until 16 July 2009 – when the applicant’s submission had reached the Regional Court – and that it ended on 13 August 2009, when the applicant had learned of the Regional Court’s judgment through his lawyer. The written version of the Constitutional Court’s decision was served on the applicant on 21 January 2010. 14. Meanwhile, at an unspecified time in November 2009, the applicant had been expelled to Russia. 15. In his observations in reply to those of the Government on the admissibility and merits of the present application, the applicant informed the Court that he had challenged the judgment of 13 August 2009 by means of an appeal to the Supreme Court (Najvyšší súd). 16. On 3 November 2009 the Supreme Court quashed the impugned judgment and remitted the matter to the Regional Court for re-examination, having found that the latter had neither established all the relevant facts nor dealt properly with some of the applicant’s material objections. 17. On 19 January 2010 the Regional Court ruled anew on the applicant’s application dated 13 July 2009 by quashing the order of 26 June 2009 and remitting the matter to the Foreigners Police Department for a new decision on the grounds that they had failed both to establish and properly to assess all the relevant facts. The decision was served on the applicant on 19 February 2013.