EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION / Alla Tymofeyeva (ed.)

Questions: 1. Which provision(s) of the Convention could be violated? 2. Was the application admissible? If not, on which grounds? 3. If yes, was there a violation of this provision(s)? 4. What is slavery under the Convention? 5. If you were a judge of the European Court of Human Rights, how would you decide the case? Kazakh The applicant was born in 1970 in the town of Kustanay, in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent member of the Soviet Union. From 1988 to 1990 he served in the Soviet Army in Vladivostok. In 1990 he enrolled as a student at the military academy in the town of Ryazan in Russia. When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, Kazakhstan became an independent State. Under Kazakh law, all those who were permanent residents of Kazakhstan in 1991 acquired Kazakh citizenship. A similar law was enacted in the Russian Federation. In 1992 the applicant left the military academy and for personal reasons returned to Kazakhstan. He had a USSR passport and was married to a Russian woman. In 1998 the applicant was convicted in Kazakhstan for armed robbery. According to him, he was wrongly accused. The applicant served part of the sentence in a prison and was later transferred to an “open colony”, where convicts could move around unguarded. In 2001, when he was on leave from the colony, he fled to Russia. Upon his arrival in Russia the applicant obtained a false Russian passport. He lived and worked in Russia under a false name using that passport. The applicant’s real identity was discovered in 2007; he was sentenced by a judge to a fine for forgery of an official document, but remained in Russia. In 2007 the Kazakh authorities requested the extradition of the applicant to Kazakhstan. On 2 May 2007 the applicant was arrested and detained in Russia in connection with that request, but on 5 October 2007 he was released on the order of Judge K. No extradition followed. It appears that some time later the Kazakh authorities renewed their request. On 28 February 2011 the applicant was detained again upon the orders of the Kaluga town prosecutor. On 30 March 2011 the applicant challenged the detention order before the court. The case was received by Judge K. from the Sverdlovskiy District Court, who set the date of the first hearing for 8 April 2011. On 15 April 2011 Judge N. from the Sverdlovskiy District Court of Kostroma examined the applicant’s complaint and ruled that the prosecutor’s detention order of 28 February 2011 was unlawful. The District Court found that under Russian law a prison sentence handed down by a foreign court was not sufficient for a person to be detained without a detention order issued by a court in Russia. The District Court ordered the prosecutor to take measures in order to rectify the situation complained of. At the same hearing the prosecutor filed a request with the District Court seeking the applicant’s detention pending extradition. The District Court examined it on the spot and ruled that the applicant was to be detained to prevent him from absconding. On 28 April 2011 that detention order was quashed by the Kostroma Regional Court as unsubstantiated. The Regional Court noted, in particular, that in view of the applicant’s profile and his previous behaviour (namely, the fact that after his first arrest pending extradition in 2007 he had continued to live openly at his officially known address) there was no reason to suppose

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION

53