Published on 19 December 2022

SECOND SECTION

Application no. 39943/22 K.A. against Lithuania lodged on 5 August 2022 communicated on 2 December 2022

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns deprivation of liberty of an asylum seeker.

The applicant is a Syrian national. He arrived in Lithuania from Belarus in July 2021 and lodged an asylum application. The asylum proceedings are still pending.

On 11 February 2022 the Migration Department adopted a decision to place the applicant in the Foreigners’ Registration Centre in Kybartai, without granting him freedom of movement on the territory of Lithuania, for six months (until 11 August 2022). The applicant was notified of that decision. He stated that he intended to appeal against it and that he wished to be provided with free legal assistance. The applicant submits that free legal assistance was not provided to him. In May 2022 he prepared a complaint himself and lodged it with the Kaunas District Court. On 1 June 2022 the court refused to accept the complaint for examination, on the grounds that the applicant had missed the fourteen-day time-limit for lodging it. However, on 20 July 2022 the Supreme Administrative Court quashed that decision, finding that the time-limit had been missed for important reasons. It remitted the question of the admissibility of the complaint to the first-instance court.

On 1 August 2022 the applicant asked the Kaunas District Court to expedite the examination of his complaint, in view of the fact that the impugned decision of the Migration Department would expire on 11 August 2022. The court informed him that there were no grounds to expedite the examination of the case.

The applicant complains that the deprivation of his liberty was unjustified, that the judicial review of that decision was insufficiently speedy and that he was not provided with free legal assistance. He raises these complaints under Articles 3, 6 § 1 and 6 § 3 (c) of the Convention.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Was the applicant deprived of his liberty, within the meaning of Article 5 § 1 of the Convention, during the period from 11 February to 11 August 2022 (see Ilias and Ahmed v. Hungary [GC], no. 47287/15, §§ 211-17, 21 November 2019, and, mutatis mutandis , R.R. and Others v. Hungary , no. 36037/17, §§ 76-83, 2 March 2021)?

2. Without prejudice to the answer to the previous question and assuming that the applicant was deprived of his liberty:

(a) Was the deprivation of liberty in line with the requirements of Article 5 § 1 (f) of the Convention (see Z.A. and Others v. Russia [GC], nos. 61411/15 and 3 others, § 162, 21 November 2019, and M.H. and Others v. Croatia , nos. 15670/18 and 43115/18, §§ 229-35, 18 November 2021, and the cases cited therein)?

(b) Did the applicant have a possibility to have the lawfulness of the deprivation of liberty reviewed speedily by a court, as required under Article 5 § 4 of the Convention (see Khlaifia and Others v. Italy [GC], no. 16483/12, §§ 128-31, 15 December 2016, and the cases cited therein)?

(c) In order to ensure procedural fairness under Article 5 § 4 of the Convention, was it essential, in the circumstances of the present case, for the applicant to have effective assistance of a lawyer (see Černák v. Slovakia , no. 36997/08, § 78, 17 December 2013, and the case-law cited therein)? If so, did he have an effective access to free legal assistance?

The parties are asked to inform the Court about the outcome of the proceedings concerning the aforementioned complaint lodged by the applicant about his placement in the Foreigners’ Registration Centre and to provide copies of any decisions taken by the domestic courts.