Case Summary Of The Affaire Musa Et Autres C. Bulgarie

Case Summary Case of Musa and Others vs. Bulgaria Case of Musa and Others: European Court of Human Rights finds Bulgarian expulsion procedures arbitrary Ahmad Naim Moh Musa, a Jordanian national of Palestinian origin, arrived in Bulgaria in 1984 to study and left the country in 1992 on completion of his studies. He returned to Bulgaria in 1993, married there in 1994 and obtained a permanent residence permit. On 25 May 2000 he was informed of an order withdrawing his permanent residence permit and requesting him to leave Bulgarian territory within ten days; the order had been adopted on the basis of the Aliens Act, which provided for the withdrawal of residence permits issued to individuals whose activities were such as to endanger the State's security or interests. Mr Musa was not informed of the factual grounds on which the order had been based but was informed that no appeal lay against it. He submitted several appeals seeking to have the order set aside but all were dismissed. The applicants alleged that there had been a violation of their right to respect for their family and private life, and claimed that there was no effective remedy available under Bulgarian law enabling them to complain of this. They relied on Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court pointed out that it had already held that an expulsion carried out in application of the 1998 Aliens Act did not meet the requirement of lawfulness on account of the absence of sufficient guarantees against arbitrariness; it had also considered that, where matters touching on fundamental human rights were concerned, the national legislation would run counter to the rule of law if, as in the present case, the margin of appreciation granted to the executive was unlimited. As the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court did not amend its case-law in this matter until 2003, the Court noted that the interference in the applicant's right to respect for his family life had not been "in accordance with the law". It therefore concluded, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 8. For more information: Read the text of the judgment in case 61259/00 (available only in French)