Tuesday 18 November 2008

Interim Measure for 11 Afghans

Yesterday, the President of the Court decided to apply Rule 39 of the Rules of Court and ordered France not to remove a group of eleven Afghan nationals to Afghanistan. The group is being held in administrative detention pending their removal on a flight organised by France and the United Kingdom. They lodged applications last week complaining that removal would violate Article 3 ECHR (real risk of torture or ill-treatment by the Taliban) and Article 4 of Protocol 4 (prohibition of collective expulsion of aliens).

In a somewhat comparable case decided last year - Sultani v. France - the Court held that expulsion would not violate the above-mentioned rights.

For a more extensive analysis of the legal consequences of interim measures, see my earlier post here.