The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that Bulgarian authorities must not deport three Chinese Uighurs to China.
The Strasbourg-based court said that the three would be at risk of arbitrary detention, ill-treatment or even death, given China’s mass detention of thousands of Uighurs in Xinjiang province.
Cases of ill-treatment and torture of those detainees had been reported by rights groups, the court noted, with the United States State Department also reporting some killings of detainees.
Bulgarian authorities had alleged that the applicants spent time in Syria being trained by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement before coming to Bulgaria, the court noted.
It added that such suspicions could expose them to long prison terms or the death penalty without due process if they were sent back to China. (dpa/NAN)
