Asylum seekers, arbitrary detained in Lithuania in 2021/22 without recourse to a legal remedy are invited to join the claim by 10 June 2025.
From July 2021 at least four thousand people entered Lithuania from Belarus through the land border to seek asylum. They were automatically detained, without recourse to a legal remedy to challenge such detention and remained in arbitrary and unlawful detention until 2022.
In June 2023, the Lithuanian Constitutional Court found that the legal provisions introduced in 2021 and applied to automatically detain the people crossing from Belarus, violated Article 20 of the Lithuanian Constitution which guarantees everyone’s right to liberty. On this basis, the Lithuanian State ought to provide reparation to the people who suffered unjust harm when they were automatically and unlawfully detained, in violation of Lithuanian and international law.
In June 2024, a group of asylum seekers, who were unlawfully and arbitrarily detained in Lithuania in 2021/22 submitted a class action before Lithuanian courts, to seek compensation from the State. This type of legal action is now open to any other asylum seeker who suffered the same violation – i.e. arbitrary detention of those seeking asylum in Lithuania starting in 2021
On 17 December 2024 the Regional Administrative Court declared the class action admissible. On 12 March the Supreme Administrative Court has rejected the final appeal of the State Border Guards Service and today the Regional Administrative Court has established the deadline for joining the class by 10 June 2025.
The following public notice in case eI2-2146-644/2025 has been placed on Lithuanian Courts website:
Please be informed that the Regional Administrative Court has received a complaint brought by the representative of the group (24 persons according to the list), lawyer Rytis Satkauskas, and the representative of the group, Sulaiman Sameer Abduljabbar Abduljabbar, against the defendant, the State of Lithuania, represented by the Migration Department under the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Lithuania, and the State Border Guard Service under the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Lithuania, which seeks to award EUR 5 000 in non-material damages to the applicant.
The group’s complaint is brought in order to protect the interests of all members of the group. The group complaint is based on identical facts and seeks to protect the rights or interests protected by law of natural persons who are members of the group, whether identical or of a similar nature.
In the present case, all the members of the group – the applicants – are foreign nationals who, as the complaint alleges, were unjustifiably subjected to a restriction on their freedom of movement in Lithuania for a period of six months without a decision of the competent authority, as a result of which they suffered non-material damage.
Between July 2021 and June 2022, at least 4 000 asylum seekers entered the Republic of Lithuania via the Lithuanian-Belarusian border in order to lodge their asylum applications. All asylum seekers were detained at border crossing points and other unsuitable facilities and subsequently transferred to foreigners detention centres. All foreigners who applied for asylum on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania were detained and accommodated without the right to move, which amounts to detention, automatically, in accordance with the legislation in force at the time, without any consideration of individual circumstances, without an individual decision being taken, and therefore, naturally, without any possibility of appealing against such a restriction.
Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania 7 June 2023. The Constitutional Court of Lithuania, in its judgment of 7 June 2005, held that Article 5(6) of the Law on the Legal Status of Foreigners was contrary to the individual freedoms enshrined in Article 20 of the Constitution, in so far as it required that, in the event of a mass influx of foreigners, in the event of a declared state of emergency, a state of emergency or a state of war, all asylum-seekers had to be accommodated in the specified places, without the right of free movement within the territory of the Republic of Lithuania, where such accommodation could last up to 6 months, in accordance with paragraph 8 of this Article, without the competent authority having taken a decision that could be appealed to a court, as well as Article 140-8(3) of the same Law, which established a similar legal regulation on 23 December 2021. Any person who is the victim of unlawful detention or arrest is entitled to compensation. All persons have suffered identical acts by public authorities and the most appropriate, effective and adequate means of protecting these violated rights is a group complaint for compensation for non-pecuniary damage caused by unlawful acts of a public authority.
A group of foreigners detained by the actions of the State authorities lodged a group complaint with the Regional Administrative Court for compensation for non-pecuniary damage caused by the unlawful actions of the authorities. The group’s complaint raises only general claims; the members of the group do not raise individual claims. Additional individual damages resulting from the unlawful acts, including violence, treatment amounting to torture and inhuman treatment, injuries sustained, disfigurement, consequences for the development of children, unlawful subsequent detention, systematic violations of reception conditions and of an effective asylum procedure, which are not redressed by the group complaint, may be redressed by an individual claim, and, consequently, the individual claims shall not be made in the group complaint.
This notice informs potential members of the group who have applied for asylum in the Republic of Lithuania in the period 2021-2022 of the existence of a group claim. The Group’s claim for compensation for non-pecuniary damage suffered as a result of the unlawful automatic restriction of their liberty by the authorities of the Republic of Lithuania in accordance with the legislation in force at the time, which was contrary to international law and the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, without taking into account the individual circumstances, without taking an individual decision and, therefore, without the possibility of challenging such a deprivation of liberty, with damages of EUR 5 000 (five thousand euro), having submitted their claim and having undertaken to bear their share of the costs. A group complaint may be lodged where the complaint is based on identical or similar facts and seeks to protect identical or similar rights or legitimate interests of natural persons associated in a group; it raises a claim common to the members of the group; the group complaint is a more expedient, effective and appropriate means of resolving a particular dispute than individual complaints; and the claim is made by at least twenty persons who have expressed their will in writing. A group representative is appointed to present the group’s complaint. A group representative is a member of a group who has a claim in the proceedings and an interest in the outcome of the proceedings, who signs the complaint on behalf of the members of the group, together with the group’s lawyer, and who, together with the group’s lawyer, manages the group complaint file in the interests of the group as a representative of all the members. The group representative shall be deemed to be the applicant and all members of the group shall be deemed to be applicants, with all the procedural obligations imposed by law. Since the service of summonses and notices on the class representative and the class counsel shall be deemed to constitute proper service of summonses and notices on all members of the class. Evidence must be adduced in support of the common claim of the members of the class and the circumstances which may be relevant to the assessment of that claim.
Class representative: Sulaiman Sameer Abduljabbar Abduljabbar, address: Hietaniemenkatu 7A, 00100 Helsinki Finland, e-mail: detentiongroupclaim@amnesty.org. Defendant: State of Lithuania, represented by the Migration Department under the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania and the State Border Guard Service under the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Lithuania.
Persons wishing to become members of the Group may contact the representative of the Group by post or by e-mail detentiongroupclaim@amnesty.org until 10 June 2025. Information shall be provided in writing to the postal or e-mail address provided. After this deadline, following the court’s decision to approve the final list of members of the group, persons who, for important reasons, have not been able to exercise their right to become members of the group shall be entitled to submit to the court a reasoned request to join the group. The court may grant such an application only with the consent of the class representative and the defendant.
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