Court Granted Permanent Residence Permit to Citizen of Egypt

(Successful case of Human Rights Center)

Natia Gogolashvili

“The Counter-Intelligence Department [CID] considers it is not reasonable to grant permanent residential permit to an applicant,” citizen of Egypt Emad Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim received this conclusion several times form the CID. As a result, State Services Development Agency of the Ministry of Justice refused to grant residence permit in Georgia without considering the propriety of the CID conclusion.

Emad Ibrahim appealed the decision of the State Services Development Agency at the Tbilisi City Court. On April 21, judge Nino Buachidze satisfied Ibrahim’s appeal and granted permanent residence permission to him. Lawyers Nana Saneblidze and Mariam Bagaturia of Human Rights Center defended the rights of the Egyptian citizen at the court.

 

Citizen of Egypt Emad Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim and Georgian citizen Nino Kapandze officially married two years ago in November 2014. They have two (4 years and 10-months-old) children. 

“My husband held temporary residence permit; initially he had one-year visa but then renewed visas eventually. We applied for residence permit several times but they refused; for that reason he had to leave the country. They did not clarify reasons of the refusal; they just sent documents which stated that my husband was dangerous person for the country; it was the only explanation. Then we applied to Human Rights Center for help. We have been operating tourist company for three years already. We bring and employ a lot of people here; we bring income for the country and they must consider similar circumstances when making decisions. How can they refuse a person to grant permit without any grounds? If he is a dangerous person, he had not started business in this country,” Nino Kapanadze said.

“The problem is that court relied on the Article 6 of the Law of Georgia on the Counter-Intelligence Activities which declares that counter-intelligence activities are secret. Thus the court did not satisfy our solicitation on involving the CID in the process that was incorrect according to our evaluation.  Nevertheless, the court finally passed judgment in our favor. We wanted to invite CID into the process in order to prove significant circumstances of the case. If the court had heard the CID, the judge would have get convinced that the CID used elective principle against applicant and not because there were grounds for this refusal.  However, we were refused because CID could not prove the circumstances that were not mentioned in our lawsuit as evidence,” lawyer Nana Saneblidze of Human Rights Center said.

“The Service Development Agency did not properly study the case. Namely they did not consider the fact that Emad Ibrahim had a family. They even did not consider that CID gave ungrounded refusal to the applicant; they could not properly use their discretive right that means they can make decisions due to public and private interests. The SDA claimed the public interest was higher but could not clarify the public interest in itself,” lawyer Mariam Bagaturia of Human Rights Center said.

Lawyers said the written version of the court judgment should be sent to the State Services Development Agency, which has one month time to issue residence permit on Emad Ibrahim.

Human Rights Center several times called on the Government of Georgia to get interested in the legal status of foreign citizens in the country and to make residence permit more available for them. 

It is noteworthy that for the regulation of immigration process in September 2014 the Law on Legal Status of Foreign and Stateless Citizens went in force. The law regulates presence, stay, transit of foreign citizens in Georgia as well as their leaving the country. According to the law, unity of family, combat of discrimination, not expelling and defense of best interests of a child are the main principles.