On 14 September 2021, in a case in which we assisted a person who had been permanently expelled following a criminal conviction, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of our client that the expulsion constituted a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Born in Somalia, the applicant came to Denmark when he was four years old and has been legally resident in the country for more than twenty years. He has not since visited his country of origin and, apart from a basic knowledge of the Somali language, has virtually no personal ties with the country.
In October 2018, he was sentenced at the Vestre Landsret to two and a half years' imprisonment and permanent deportation for, in association with three others, possessing a loaded firearm and two minor offences under the law on narcotic drugs. Prior to this conviction, he had received a suspended sentence for robbery and a partially suspended sentence for burglary committed when he was a minor. As an adult, he had a number of fines for traffic offences as well as offences under the law on narcotic drugs. None of his previous convictions had resulted in conditional or notice of deportation.
The European Court of Human Rights has considered the complaint under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the right to privacy, as our client has not yet established his own family in Denmark.
In this case, the European Court of Human Rights had to assess whether the expulsion could be considered a proportionate punishment, taking into account, on the one hand, the seriousness of the offences and the length of the sentence imposed on our client and, on the other hand, his strong ties with Denmark and correspondingly weak ties with Somalia.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the permanent expulsion of an established immigrant who has spent most of his childhood and youth in the host country requires very weighty considerations of the maintenance of law and order.
In this context, the European Court of Human Rights pointed out that, notwithstanding the fact that the crime convicted constituted, in isolation, a threat to public policy at the time of the commission of the crime, it had not been established, on the basis of previous criminal convictions, that our client generally constituted such a threat.
In the light of all the circumstances of the case, including the fact that our client was sentenced to a relatively mild penalty, had never previously been warned of possible deportation, had very strong links with Denmark and virtually no links with Somalia, the European Court of Human Rights found that by deporting our client permanently the Danish State had violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Read the judgment here