In the case of conviction of the Republic of Moldova for the expulsion of Turkish teachers, the European Court of Human Rights used the term “abusive” – abusive extradition. The judges of the Strasbourg Court wanted to underline the violation of the European Convention on Human Rights as this term is seldom used, only in extreme cases that reveal complex human rights problems, said representatives of the Legal Resources Center from Moldova and Promo-LEX Association, who called on the authorities to be responsible and to make effort to clarify what happened in September 2018.
In a news conference at IPN, Daniel Goinic, legal adviser at the Center, said the period during which the case of Ozdil and others versus the Republic of Moldova was examined by the ECHR was of only nine months. Later, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe took action over the execution of the ECHR judgment, which was placed under advanced supervision, being classed as referring to serious human rights problems. The first hearing where the issue was examined was held last September. Since then the Government transmitted several plans of auction that envisioned just satisfaction in the amount of €25,000 per plaintiff, the publication and dissemination of the ECHR judgment in Romanian.
In December 2020, the governmental agent informed that a Government decision on the procedure for returning or expelling foreigners was being amended. Promo-LEX and the Center identified a problem, namely that you cannot amend the decision if you do not amend the law on the status of foreigners. But the national authorities didn’t take measures to remove the shortcomings from the legislation. The Committee asked that information about the amendment of the legislation should be provided by September 2021. In December 2021, this case is to be examined again.
Vadim Vieru, director of the Human Rights Program of Promo-LEX, said the authorities are asked to present, by this September, information about the developments in the criminal case in which the former SIS director was convicted and about the character of the penalty, which earlier was disproportionate.
Vadim Vieru, who is also the lawyer for the relative of one of the teachers, noted the criminal case against the former SIS director was examined in a secret hearing, the case being classed as secret. The fact that a sentence was given was made known in a TV program that involved the prosecutor general. The relatives of the Turkish teachers found out that the sentence was pronounced in a criminal case without injured parties and with the SIS and the Ministry of Finance as the civil party. The relatives weren’t invited as participants in the trial even if they were to. The wife of one of the teachers filed an appeal and this is pending at the court. There were also accepted the applications to allow access to the state secret.
Vadim Vieru called on the Government, the authorities, in general, and on the Prosecutor’s Office, in particular, not to hide behind formalism and to make effort to clarify what happened in the case of the Turkish teachers as justice should be done in this case.
The news conference forms part of the series of conferences held in the framework of IPN’s project “Exposing Injustice through Multimedia”. IPN Agency does not assume the right to decide if the organizers of news conferences are right in the cases about which they will speak as this is the exclusive prerogative of justice, but the exaggeratedly long examination period of these cases, which is much longer than the law allows, can be considered an act of evident unfairness and injustice. IPN News Agency does not bear responsibility for the public statements made in the public sphere by the organizers of news conferences.
