Justice minister: ECtHR decision in favour of govt, ‘sovereign and legitimate border protection’

Justice Minister Judit Varga said on Thursday that a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling today determined that staying in Hungary’s transit zone did not count as illegal detention and conditions in the zone were consistent with the prohibition of inhumane treatment.

In a statement, Varga noted that the case had been brought by the Helsinki Committee representing two Bangladeshi nationals who applied for asylum in Hungary in September 2015. They later left the transit zone at the Hungarian-Serbian border near Röszke and entered Serbia, she said.

In its binding ruling, the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR overruled the 2017 first instance ruling that the migrants’ detention equalled imprisonment.

Thursday’s ruling said that the asylum seekers entered the transit zone of their own free will and had been held there lawfully by the Hungarian authorities, Varga said. They were free to return to Serbia, she added.

The ECtHR said in today’s ruling that the Hungarian authorities had violated some rules in the case of the two asylum seekers, but that confining them to the transit zone at Hungary’s southern border was not illegal.

The two Bangladeshi nationals applied for asylum in Hungary in September 2015. The authorities kept them in detention at Roszke for three weeks before expelling them to Serbia.