Hungarian court gave political asylum to a Russian politician in spite of the government’s will

A court of Pécs decided to give political asylum to Aleksei Torubarov, a well-known Russian opposition politician, even though the Hungarian authorities declined his application. The arbitrament is expected to establish a precedent since the Hungarian court adopted a general ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union saying that any court in a country can grant political asylum even if national authorities refuse to do so.

The 60-year-old Russian citizen from Volgograd was originally a teacher, but after capitalism arrived in Russia, he became a businessman, mainly selling inexpensive Chinese clothing. Soon enough he had enough capital to start a restaurant, which by 2008 became a chain of ten restaurants. As soon as he became quite wealthy, criminal groups with ties to the Federal Security Service (FSB)

began demanding money from him and threatening him

because they wanted to take his companies. Fed up with this kind of clientelism and corruption, he joined Boris Nemtsov’s party, Right Cause, a Russian opposition party. In response, the local mafia decided to ruin him completely, so he fled his country and has been living in Hungary for six years – hvg.hu reported.

The harassment continued even abroad, for example, in Austria he was attacked by a hitman and

the Czech Republic wanted to extradite him to Russia.

Therefore, he fled to Hungary through the Czech Republic and Ukraine and said that provided he receives political asylum he would return to Prague and continue his business there.

His wife and his younger son live in the Czech capital who he can meet only once every two months. Furthermore, his older son is a professional dancer, and lately, his baby was born; however, Mr Tubarov could only see him through video calls.

He asked for political asylum many times in Hungary, but authorities refused to grant it to him even though Hungarian courts said that

he is a persecutee of the Putin-regime, so he deserves protection. 

But how could a government office overrule the repeated rulings of the courts? According to the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, in 2015, the government majority took away the right of the courts to make rulings on their own about the fate of asylum seekers. In the last four years, the judges could rule only on the illegality of the immigration office’s decisions but could do nothing about them. When it happened for the third time, the judge in Pécs became tired of this game and, following the advice of the lawyer of the Helsinki Commission who represented Torubarov, turned to the European Court of Justice to rule on the legality of the Hungarian law.

On July 29, the European Court of Justice rendered its decision, which is applicable not only in Hungary but in all member states of the European Union. No longer can a government office invalidate an asylum decision made by the courts without additional information that would alter that decision. Thus, the office of immigration can no longer override rulings for years on end. 

The Helsinki Committee said that the victory of

Tolubarov may give hope for others

who are not given political asylum because of the Hungarian authorities.

As we reported before, in the case of the former PM of Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, Hungarian authorities acted adversely. Before Gruevski should have started to serve his prison sentence for committing economic crimes, Hungarian diplomats helped him to leave his country, and as a personal friend of PM Viktor Orbán, he received political asylum in Hungary in just a couple of days.

Meanwhile, Hungary supports Macedonia’s EU accession, so it does not regard the Balkan country as one breaking the rule of law in its court decisions.

True, Gruevski was the first who attacked George Soros and talked about his dangerous plan aiming to settle migrants in Europe. He was not successful with these claims in Macedonia, but in Hungary, such campaigns resulted in landslide victories for the government parties in both the national and the European parliamentary elections.

Source: hvg.hu