The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has decided that deporting a Somali asylum seeker, whose claim had been rejected, back to Somalia would not violate Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to life and prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment).
The Swedish authorities intended to deport the applicant to Somaliland. The Court notes that, in the absence of any tribal connections of the applicant to that part of the country, the applicant would have to move to Mogadishu, where his wife lived. The Court finds that the general situation in Mogadishu has improved and is no longer one of generalised violence where everyone in the city is at risk of treatment contrary to Article 3. Therefore, the situation in Mogadishu in itself could not prevent the deportation of the applicant. When assessing the individual situation of the applicant, the Court finds that he had failed to provide sufficient evidence that he would be subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3 if sent back to Mogadishu.
The Court bases its assessment of the general situation in Mogadishu on the joint report issued by the Danish and the Norwegian Immigration Services in January 2013 about the security situation there. The Court changes the assessment it had made of that situation in the Sufi and Elmi case in 2011.
This article originally appeared in the ECRE Weekly Bulletin of 6 September 2013.
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