Decision No. 746/1998 of the Committee of Injunctions of the Council of State

Summary of facts:The Applicant is of Palestinian origin (considered either stateless or Lebanese). He entered, together with his wife, into Greece in 1991 and, a little later, applied for asylum, finally rejected by the Ministry of Public Order. Later on, while the Applicant and his wife were under the UNHCR protection, the Secretary General of the MPO allowed them residence in Greece "under tolerance on humanitarian grounds and so as to prepare their departure" and gave them a six-month special residence permit. This permit was renewed twice more but his application for renewal, in 1996, was rejected. The Applicant was arrested in 1998 and his expulsion was ordered, together with his detention pending expulsion. The Applicant appealed against this decision before the Council of State, applying also for temporary judicial protection. He claimed among other reasons, in his request to annul the said orders, that he had his family-pregnant wife and 4 children- in Greece, where he resided since 1991. Before the Committee it was demonstrated that his expulsion was ordered because he remained in Greece illegally and contrary to the provisions of Law 1975\1991 and raised serious public order problems. He had appealed against the said order before the Minister of Public Order who rejected the appeal. The reasoning for the rejection of this appeal on the grounds of "public order and security" was that the Applicant, according to police notes, "was active among the Islamic circles in Greece and allegedly a Hamas militant". The Injunctions Committee, after the Applicant's explanation that his Islamic involvement amounted to acting as an imam for the Muslim faith in Athens, asked the MPO for further clarification and specific information on their accusations of "Hamas membership" that would potentially jeopardize public order and security. In his reply, MPO referred to his previous correspondence and added that the "expulsion decision due to illegal residence is founded on information and elements of preventive police investigation on matters of national security which cannot be communicated since they are confidential". 

Reasoning and decision:The Committee took note of the fact that the Administration refused to detail the precise reasons of public order and security for the Applicant's expulsion. It decided, in consequence, that there are no elements that justify the rejection of the application for reasons of public order, noted the family situation of the Applicant and the fact that he lives and works in Greece since 1991 and ruled that an immediate enforcement of the orders under appeal would provoke irreparable damage to the Applicant's interests if the application for annulment were accepted. 

The Committee decided to suspend the enforcement of the administrative acts under appeal and noted to the Administration that, in case they consider that compelling reasons of public interest, duly specified, impose the immediate enforcement of the said acts, it can, at any given moment, apply to have this ruling revoked.