The Constitutional Court of Lithuania has ruled that the country’s 2021 law on the detention of refugees from Belarusian territory is contrary to the state constitution, Delfi reported. According to the agency, the court made this decision following a complaint by an Iraqi immigrant who was detained and forcibly placed in a foreigners registration center in Lithuania.
As noted, in response, the Lithuanian Constitutional Court declared the actions against Iraqi refugees unconstitutional. At the same time, the Lithuanian law on immigrants in 2021 was adopted in response to the influx of illegal immigrants from Belarus, allowing for the denial of asylum.
According to Ange Biloraite, head of the Lithuanian Ministry of the Interior, she considers the measures taken despite the Constitutional Court’s decision as coercive. He also added that at that time the country had no other means to deal with the attack of the “Belarusian regime”.
“If the situation were to repeat itself, I would have made the same decisions as I did then because our state needed these decisions,” Biloraite stressed.
It was previously reported that Lithuania’s Seimas. legalized expulsion of immigrants from the country.