The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Cyprus violated Article 5 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to liberty, in a case brought by a Moroccan asylum-seeker identified as K.A.
The court’s Fifth Section unanimously awarded the applicant 5,000 euros ($5,800) in damages for non-pecuniary harm. It also ordered the state to pay 3,750 euros in legal costs. Both sums are to be paid within three months.
K.A., born in 1966 and living in Oroklini, filed the complaint on Feb. 13, 2025. It concerns his detention on national security grounds from Jan. 10, 2019, to Feb. 24, 2020, at the Menoyia detention center, and the domestic proceedings in which he challenged it. He argued the detention was unlawful and, among other things, arbitrary because of its length.
The court said there was no indication that the place or conditions of detention were unsuitable or that the authorities acted in bad faith. But it cited a lack of clarity among domestic authorities about the purpose of the detention.
It said the authorities already had the information needed to assess his asylum claim, and possibly reject it on national security grounds, from the day detention was ordered. A swift examination of the claim and a final decision would have served the interests of both the applicant and the state, it said.
The court found that K.A.’s detention was not sufficiently linked to preventing unauthorized entry and that it lasted longer than would normally be needed for that purpose. It noted the asylum application was not particularly complex and that no progress was made in its judicial examination.
The court found no violation of Article 5 § 4, which guarantees the right to judicial review of the lawfulness of detention. It rejected K.A.’s complaint that the withholding of classified material prevented him from effectively challenging his detention.
