Tyden.cz reported that the regional court in Brno has cancelled a decision by the Czech Interior Ministry not to grant international protection to Timur Borchashvili, a Georgian citizen of Chechen descent.

Last year, the Interior Ministry repeatedly dismissed Borchashvili’s application for asylum and in June also his request for international protection.

Timur Borchashvili challenged the decision, arguing that if he returned to Georgia, Russian intelligence service could jeopardise him. Borchashvili said his life had been in danger even before he left Georgia.

Czech senator Jaromir Stetina, who focuses on Russian affairs, said Borchashvili had been endangered as he cooperated with Aslan Maskhadov, the former Chechen president killed in 2005. Stetina said he did not know Borchashvili’s current whereabouts.

Timur Borchashvili argued in court that as his right to a free lawyer had been violated, unqualified people who tried to help him had to write down his request for international protection. He dismissed the Interior Ministry’s claim that as a foreigner he was not in an emergency situation.

Tomas Haisman, head of the ministry asylum and migration policy department, said “based on Borchashvili’s account the office came to the conclusion that his testimony was not trustworthy and it found his request inadmissible.”

The Brno court ruled that the Interior Ministry had failed to deal with Borchashvili’s fears for his life or his application for asylum from last May. The court highlighted the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees setting down that a state does not expel a refugee if his life or political freedom might thus be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

The Interior Ministry now has to examine whether the clause of the Convention relates to Borchashvili.