European court flays Cyprus for deporting Syrian refugees to Lebanon

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday condemned Cyprus for returning to Lebanon two Syrian refugees who had arrived on a small boat, without examining their asylum claim.

In a damning verdict, the ECHR said that Cyprus had committed four violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Strasbourg-based court enforces, by returning the two refugees to Lebanon.

The pair fled the Syrian city of Idlib and the civil war in their home country in 2016, staying in refugee camps in Lebanon. In 2020 they paid a smuggler to take them across the Mediterranean to Cyprus along with over two dozen other migrants, the ECHR said.

The boat was intercepted by the Cypriot maritime authorities who said they had entered Cypriot territorial waters without permission and swiftly returned then to Lebanon where they still remain.

Cypriot authorities had essentially returned the pair to Lebanon "without processing their asylum claims and without all the steps required under the refugee law," said the verdict.

Cyprus failed to conduct "any assessment of the risk of lack of access to an effective asylum process in Lebanon or the living conditions of asylum-seekers there," it added.

Nicosia had also not assessed the risk of "refoulement" -- the forcible return of refugees to a country such as Syria where they might be subjected to persecution, it added.

The Court said the two plaintiffs, named as M.A. and Z.R. said they had been "tricked" into thinking that they would be led ashore on arrival in Cyprus and were instead forced to board another boat that took them back to Lebanon.

The Court ordered Cyprus to pay 22,000 euros in damages to each applicant and 4,700 euros jointly for costs and expenses.

The ECHR is part of the 46-member Council of Europe, the continent's top rights body and an entirely separate entity from the European Union.