The police are temporarily suspending removals to Iraq, as the Helsinki Police Department reported on Twitter on Saturday 16 November 2019. This temporary suspension of removals only applies to enforcement of decisions on removal from the country made in the asylum process and is, as the term indicates, not permanent. The National Police Commissioner discussed the matter with the Minister of the Interior before making the decision.
The police have no plans for removals to Iraq in the coming weeks. There have been suspensions of removals to Iraq before. The previous temporary suspension of removals occurred last autumn, when Iraq refused to accept the persons being removed to Iraq by the police.
The policy on Iraq adopted by the National Police Board with the Helsinki Police Department and applying to all police departments is partly due to the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) where Finland was deemed to have violated the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically the Article that protects everyone’s right to life and the Article that prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
“What this means in practice is that the police will, for now, refrain from enforcing decisions of removal from the country to Iraq. Once we receive more information on how the decision-making authorities respond to the decision of the ECHR, we will decide on whether and when to continue removals from the country,” says Chief Superintendent Mia Poutanen from the National Police Board.
The decisions of the European Court of Human Rights did not address a removal from the country enforced by the police and therefore was not a decision regarding the actions of the police. However, the police, being the enforcing authority, are ultimately responsible for ensuring that a non-refoulement decision is not violated. There are absolute and mandatory provisions on non-refoulement in several international treaties, in EU legislation and in Finland’s national legislation. Non-refoulement is a principle that dictates that no individual may be returned to a country where there is a risk of being subjected to the death penalty, torture, persecution or other inhuman or degrading treatment.
The decision by the police to suspend removals from the country to Iraq only applies in cases in which removal would be enforced by the police; in other words, voluntary return to Iraq, as indeed to other countries, is still possible. Every individual who wishes to comply with their return decision and go back voluntarily is of course allowed to do so.
By the end of September this year, the police had removed 1,960 individuals receiving a decision of removal from the country, to about 100 countries. The number of individuals removed by the police to Iraq this year is 46, of whom 17 were escorted. So far this year, 176 individuals have returned to Iraq on an assisted voluntary return, compared with 449 last year. These returns are organised by the Finnish Immigration Service and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
