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Greece and Italy have violated human rights in an attempt to hold a collective return of immigrants and applicants to obtain refugee status, as stated by the European Court of Human Rights.

The "Sharifi and others v Greece and Italy" case affects a total of 35 immigrants, including 32 from Afghanistan, two from Sudan and one from Eritrea. In order to escape from their home countries and the contained war they had initially arrived in Greece and then set off to Italy.

The local authorities had however detected them and, under the Dublin 2 Regulation, returned them back to Greece. In turn the Greek authorities ordered the extradition of 10 of them, without taking into account the decision of the European Court of Human Rights that had been enforced in the meantime and instructed on the interruption of the procedure for their return to their home countries.

The court accepted with a majority that Greece had violated Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights against Reza Karimi, Yasir Zaidi, Mozamil Azimi and Najeeb Heyberi and regulated the right to effective means of defence. Greece is sentenced for the violation of Article 3 of the legal document that prohibits inhuman and degrading treatment, provoked by refusing the immigrants access to the procedure for asylum granting.
 
With a majority again, the court decided that Italy had violated Article 4 of Protocol №4 of the Convention, which prohibits the collective expulsion of foreign citizens. Italy is also found guilty due to the violation of Article 3 of the Convention, as, by extraditing the immigrants in Greece, it had put them at the risks associated with the defects of the procedure for asylum granting in the country. The third charge on which Italy is found guilty is that it had not allowed the immigrants to apply for asylum there.

The court decision states that the Dublin 2 provisions, according to which the asylum applications must be submitted in the first European Union Member State entered by the immigrants, must be applied in consistency with the European Convention of Human Rights.

"No form of collective expulsion of immigrants can be justified by the provisions of the Dublin 2 Regulations if there is no guarantee that the country to which they are sent offers sufficient guarantees for the implementation of the policy on asylum," reads the decision of the European Court of Human Rights.