issued by the Registrar of the Court  
ECHR 388 (2019)  
14.11.2019  
Finnish decision to deport an Iraqi man  
who was killed when he arrived back in his country of origin  
violated the Convention  
In today’s Chamber judgment1 in the case of N.A. v. Finland (application no. 25244/18) the European  
Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:  
a violation of Article 2 (right to life) and Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman and  
degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights owing to decisions to deport  
the applicant’s father to his country of origin, Iraq, where he was subsequently killed.  
The Court found in particular that the Finnish authorities had not carried out a thorough enough  
assessment of the individual risks faced by the applicant’s father in Iraq although they had accepted  
his account of having faced two near deadly attacks in a context of tensions between Shia and Sunni  
Muslim groups, the father belonging to the latter.  
The Finnish authorities’ decision to expel the father, who had had a conflict with a Shia colleague in  
his place of work as an investigator for the Interior Ministry, had ultimately forced him to agree to  
return voluntarily to Iraq, where he had been shot and killed soon after arrival.  
Principal facts  
The applicant, Ms N.A., is an Iraqi national who was born in 1996 and lives in Finland.  
The applicant’s father was a Sunni Muslim Arab from Baghdad. He served as a major in the army  
under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and then for an American logistics company after the fall  
of that regime. Between 2007 and 2015 he worked in the Iraqi Office of the Inspector General, part  
of the Interior Ministry, where he was an investigator and then a leading officer on human rights  
crimes and corruption cases. He often had to investigate intelligence service officers or officers in  
militia groups. His work became more dangerous when Shia militia gained prominence.  
He was investigating a case in 2015 when he had a disagreement with a colleague, who allegedly  
belonged to a leading Shia militia group, the Badr Organisation. The colleague assaulted the  
applicant’s father and insulted him but was then transferred to the intelligence service and  
promoted. In February 2015 there was an attempt on the applicant’s father’s life when someone  
tried to shoot him. He reported the attack but later concluded that it was not being investigated.  
Feeling that he would not be protected in Iraq or receive any justice, he resigned in March 2015.  
In April 2015 a bomb exploded in the family car just after the applicant’s father and mother had got  
out of it and in May of that year the applicant herself was the victim of an attempted kidnapping.  
The family arrived in Finland in September 2015 and the father sought international protection. The  
authorities rejected his asylum application in December 2016, the Immigration Service accepting his  
account of the facts but deciding that Sunni Arabs did not per se face persecution in Iraq.  
1. Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery,  
any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges  
considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final  
judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.  
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution.  
Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution.  
An appeal by the applicant’s father was dismissed by the Helsinki Administrative Court in September  
2017. It held that he faced no danger owing to his past work for the regime of Saddam Hussein or  
the American logistics company. There was no proof that the attacks on him had been due to his  
conflict with his former colleague at the Interior Ministry, rather the general security situation in Iraq  
was to blame. There was also no real risk of persecution owing to his Sunni background. He was  
refused leave to appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court at the end of November 2017.  
The applicant’s father returned to Iraq in November 2017 under assisted voluntary return. In  
December 2017 the applicant learned that her aunt’s apartment, used previously by the family as a  
hiding place, had been attacked. Later that month she was informed that her father had been killed  
by unidentified gunmen. According to documents submitted by the applicant her father was shot  
three times in a street in Baghdad.  
Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court  
The applicant complained that her father’s expulsion to Iraq had violated Article 2 (right to life) and  
Article 3 (prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment).  
The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 23 May 2018.  
Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:  
Ksenija Turković (Croatia), President,  
Krzysztof Wojtyczek (Poland),  
Aleš Pejchal (the Czech Republic),  
Pauliine Koskelo (Finland),  
Tim Eicke (the United Kingdom),  
Jovan Ilievski (North Macedonia),  
Raffaele Sabato (Italy),  
and also Abel Campos, Section Registrar.  
Decision of the Court  
Article 2 and Article 3  
The Court took note of the Government’s argument that Finland did not have jurisdiction as the  
applicant’s father had returned voluntarily to his land of origin. However, the applicant had argued  
that the return had not been voluntary, but had rather been forced on him by the Finnish domestic  
authorities’ decisions. Her father had not wanted to attract the attention of the Iraqi authorities by  
being forcibly returned and had not wanted to have a two-year Schengen area visa ban.  
The Court found that the applicant’s father would not have returned to Iraq if an enforceable  
expulsion decision had not been issued against him and so his decision had not been voluntary in the  
sense of being a free choice. The respondent State’s jurisdiction could therefore be engaged under  
Article 1 of the Convention.  
The Court also cited the lack of a genuinely free choice as a reason to reject a further implicit  
argument by the Government that the applicant’s father had waived his right to Convention  
protection because he had signed a declaration that no agency or authority taking part in his return  
could be held liable or responsible.  
The Court noted that the Finnish authorities had found the applicant’s father’s account of events in  
his asylum application to be both credible and coherent, including the possibility that he could be of  
interest to the Iraqi authorities or non-State actors.  
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The domestic authorities had also referred extensively to relevant country information on Iraq,  
which showed among other things that there were tensions between Shia militia groups and Sunni  
Arab Muslims, that there had been incidents where Iraqis who had worked for American companies  
had been killed, and that the security situation in Baghdad required decision makers to look at the  
risks faced by particular individuals facing deportation.  
When taken cumulatively, and considered in the light of the general security situation and violence,  
it was possible that such factors could give rise to a real risk. However, the domestic authorities had  
not made such a cumulative assessment.  
Even more importantly, the courts had not given enough consideration to the violent attempts on  
the applicant’s father’s life before he had left Iraq, although the Finnish authorities had  
acknowledged the shooting and car bomb as facts. Instead, they had seen those incidents as part of  
the general security situation, rather than being focussed on the applicant’s father in particular.  
The Court could not see a plausible explanation for why the Finnish authorities had not taken those  
two incidents more seriously or looked at them in terms of a risk that the father had been personally  
targeted. Furthermore, the dispute between the father and his colleague had been dismissed as a  
personal conflict rather than being examined for possible links with their religious affiliations and  
tensions between Shia and Sunni groups or the attempts on the father’s life.  
The Court was thus not convinced that the Finnish authorities’ assessment of the risks faced by the  
father if he was returned to Iraq had met the requirements of Article 2 or Article 3. Indeed, those  
authorities were or should have been aware of the risks he faced.  
The Court concluded that the Finnish authorities had failed to comply with their obligations under  
Article 2 or Article 3 when dealing with the applicant’s father’s asylum application and there had  
been a violation of both of those provisions. It rejected a complaint by the applicant about her own  
rights under Article 3 having been violated.  
Just satisfaction (Article 41)  
The Court held that Finland was to pay the applicant 20,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary  
damage and EUR 4,500 in respect of costs and expenses.  
The judgment is available only in English.  
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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member  
States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.  
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