The documents were confiscated by border guards without proper legal justification and motivation.
In the Chernivtsi region, the border guards seized, and then the court illegally arrested the passports for traveling abroad 430 Ukrainian citizens and one Moldovan. This was announced by Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmitry Lubinets on Telegram.
Citizens applied to the Ombudsman regarding the violation of their constitutional right to freedom of movement.
“On April 11, border guards at one of the checkpoints in the Chernivtsi region confiscated their biometric passports with valid visa documents. We are talking about 430 citizens of Ukraine and one citizen of the Republic of Moldova,” he wrote.
Lubinets noted that documents were confiscated from citizens without reasonable legal justification and motivation. Later, on April 18, the investigating judge of the Heratseevsky District Court of the Chernivtsi Region seized the seized documents, violating procedural deadlines for considering the prosecutor’s petition and disregarding the principles of practice of the ECtHR and the law on freedom of movement.
In addition, the Ombudsman emphasized that, according to Art. 33 of the Constitution of Ukraine, everyone who is legally in the territory of Ukraine is guaranteed freedom of movement, free choice of place of residence, the right to freely leave the territory of Ukraine, except for restrictions established by law.
In order to protect the violated rights, the applicants applied to the Court of Appeal to cancel the decision of the Heratseevsky District Court, as well as to the Ombudsman – to monitor compliance with their procedural rights in the court session.
“On my instructions, the employees of the Ombudsman’s Office monitored the court hearings of the Court of Appeal. In its decision of April 28, the court canceled the confiscation of seized passports of citizens for travel abroad country, they were ordered to return the documents to their owners. or authorized persons,” wrote Lubinets.
Thus, the rights of property owners temporarily confiscated illegally were restored. Therefore, violations of procedural rights during the trial in the appeal instance were not recorded.
It will be remembered that Lubinets advised the Ukrainians who ended up in the occupied territories to get Russian passports in order to live, or to leave the occupied territory in any way.
Earlier, in Uzhgorod, the court took away the passport from the UOC-MP priest.
Source: korrespondent
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