Today, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has announced the judgment concerning Georgian citizens’ deportation from Russia. According to judgment, Russia has to pay Georgia 10,000,000 euros in respect of non-pecuniary damage sustained by a group of at least 1,500 Georgian nationals.

In its judgment on the merits of 3 July 2014 the Court had ruled that in autumn 2006 the Russian authorities had implemented a coordinated policy of arresting, detaining and expelling Georgian nationals, amounting to an administrative practice contrary to the Convention.

In today’s Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Georgia v. Russia the European Court of Human Rights held, by sixteen votes to one, that Russia had to pay Georgia 10,000,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage suffered by a group of at least 1,500 Georgian nationals. That amount was to be distributed to the individual victims by paying EUR 2,000 to the Georgian nationals who had been victims only of a violation of Article 4 of Protocol No. 4 (collective expulsion), and EUR 10,000 to EUR 15,000 to those among them who had also been victims of a violation of Article 5 § 1 (unlawful deprivation of liberty) and Article 3 (inhuman and degrading conditions of detention) of the European Convention on Human Rights, taking into account the length of their respective periods of detention.