The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has started working on the court's composition to consider a complaint by Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency journalist Leonid Sviridov against a Polish court's ruling to withdraw his status of a long-term EU resident and ban him for five years from entering the Schengen Area, the journalist's Polish lawyer told Sputnik
WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th October, 2019) The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has started working on the court's composition to consider a complaint by Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency journalist Leonid Sviridov against a Polish court's ruling to withdraw his status of a long-term EU resident and ban him for five years from entering the Schengen Area, the journalist's Polish lawyer told Sputnik.
In May, the ECHR accepted the complaint in question for consideration.
"According to the information received from the ECHR, it started forming the court's composition to consider the case of my client," Yaroslav Helstovsky said.
According to the lawyer, this means that a decision should be made on "the quantitative composition of the court, on representatives of which countries will be judges and who specifically will be judges in the court in the case of Leonid Sviridov."
In October 2014, the Polish Foreign Ministry withdrew the media accreditation of Sviridov, who had been working in Warsaw since 2003, without explanation. Poland then launched a procedure to deprive Sviridov of his residence permit as well as his status of a long-term EU resident. The journalist had to leave Warsaw on December 12, 2015.
In 2018, the Polish Supreme Administrative Court finally ruled to strip him of the right to long-term residency in the European Union and put him on the list of persons whose stay in Schengen Area countries was considered undesirable.
All court materials related to the Sviridov case are classified, despite numerous demands of the defense for an explanation. There is the only official document in open domain: a letter from the director of the Polish Internal Security Agency, which says that the "continued stay of the said citizen in Poland is a valid and serious threat to the security of the state," albeit without providing further detail.
In the wake of the court decision, Sviridov appealed to the ECHR. In his complaint, the journalist claimed that the illegal ruling of the Polish court should be annulled. He also wants to receive compensation worth 40,000 Euros ($44,603), as well as a reimbursement of his expenses for defense.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly stated that the situation around Sviridov could be viewed as an attempt to restrict the freedom of speech and violate the journalist's rights to perform his work.
