On 15 April 2021, the European Court of Human Rights handed down a Chamber judgment in the case of K.I. v. France (application no. 5560/19) concerning a Russian national of Chechen origin who arrived in France when he was still a minor and obtained refugee status. After being convicted for a terrorism offence and on the grounds that his presence in France represented a serious threat to French society, the French Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) revoked his status in July 2020 under Article L. 711-6 of the Immigration and Asylum Code and his deportation to Russia was ordered.

The Court held, unanimously, that there would be: a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights under its procedural aspect if, having had his refugee status withdrawn, the applicant were to be returned to his country of origin without any prior assessment by the French authorities of the actual and current risk that he claimed to be facing in the event of his deportation.

The Court began by observing that both under the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and under that of the French Conseil d’État, the withdrawal of refugee status had no bearing on the fact of being a refugee. The question whether the applicant remained a refugee thus should have been given specific consideration by the national authorities when they examined, under Article 3 of the Convention, the reality of the risk that he faced in the event of deportation to his country of origin. The Court found that both when his deportation was ordered and when it was reviewed by a court, the French authorities, in assessing the risks that he faced on his return to Russia, had not specifically taken account of the fact that the applicant could be presumed to have remained a refugee in spite of the withdrawal of his status.

The Court concluded that there would be a violation of Article 3 of the Convention in its procedural aspect if the applicant were to be returned to Russia without any prior assessment by the French authorities of the actual and current risk that he claimed to be facing in the event of his deportation being enforced.