5.  The first applicant was born in 1988, the second applicant was born in 1994 and the remaining applicants were born in 2010-2016. According to the last letter sent by their representative to the Court on 20 May 2018, they currently reside in Poland, where their asylum applications are under consideration.
6.  The applicants used to live in the Chechen Republic. As submitted by them, the events leading to their departure were as follows.
7.  In 2005-2006 the first applicant started having problems with the Russian security services. He believed that that was happening because his relatives had participated in the Second Chechen War. Officers from the district police came to his home and questioned him at a police station, and his home was raided by armed people wearing masks. In 2009 he decided to leave Chechnya and applied for international protection in Poland, and later moved to Austria. However, in 2010 he had to return to Chechnya. There, he started working in the State security system, where he participated in counter-terrorism operations and provided security to the highest officials of Chechnya. He quit that job in October 2015, but before that he and his mother were asked if he was planning to join illegal armed groups in Syria. In February 2017 he was taken to the headquarters of the department at which he worked and asked to become an informer; he refused. In March 2017 two police officers came to his home and forcefully took him to a police station, where he was again asked to become an informer and again he refused. Afterwards he was tortured – he was given electric shocks and beaten on the kidneys, head and other parts of his body. After that he agreed to become an informer and was released after five days of detention. Following the beating, the first applicant started suffering from health problems, such as pain in the kidneys and problems with his memory.
8.  In April 2017 the applicants left Chechnya and went to Belarus with the aim of crossing into Poland. They submitted that they had attempted to lodge asylum applications several times on the Polish border, but each time the border guards had refused to accept their applications and returned them to Belarus (see M.A. and Others v. Poland, no. 42902/17, Statement of Facts and Questions to the Parties; see also paragraphs 22-26 below for further events and the applicants’ eventual acceptance into Poland).
9.  On 16 April 2017, around noon, the applicants arrived at the Medininkai checkpoint on the border between Lithuania and Belarus. They submitted to the Court that they had told the border guards in Russian that they were seeking asylum, but asylum proceedings had not been initiated.
10.  The State Border Guard Service (hereinafter “the SBGS”) issued decisions on refusal of entry in respect of all seven applicants. The decisions indicated that the applicants had been refused entry on the grounds that they did not have valid visas or residence permits. It was also indicated that the decisions could be appealed against before a regional administrative court within fourteen days. The decisions were written in Lithuanian and English.
11.  The applicants were asked to sign the decisions. In the space for a signature on each of the seven decisions, the first and second applicants wrote “azul’” in Cyrillic (азуль) – they submitted to the Court that that word was often used by Chechen asylum seekers to mean “asylum”.
12.  The border officer who was on duty at the Medininkai checkpoint that day submitted the following official report to a senior officer:
“I hereby inform you that on 16 April 2017, at 12.15 p.m., at the Medininkai border checkpoint ... a Russian national [M.A.] ... who had arrived on foot ... was refused entry into Lithuania.
The reason for refusal of entry – absence of a valid visa or residence permit.
At 12.45 p.m. the alien was returned to Belarus.
His documents were checked by a senior border officer [A.B.].”
Reports with similar wording were drawn up with respect to each of the applicants.
13.  The applicants were returned to Belarus on that same day. They did not appeal against the decisions refusing them entry into Lithuania.
14.  On 11 May 2017, around noon, the applicants arrived at the Kena checkpoint on the border between Lithuania and Belarus. They submitted to the Court that they had told the border guards that they were seeking international protection and asylum and that the first applicant had been tortured in Chechnya. However, asylum proceedings were not initiated.
15.  The SBGS issued decisions on refusal of entry in respect of all seven applicants, with the same content as before (see paragraph 10 above). The decisions were written in Lithuanian. The first and second applicants signed all seven decisions and wrote that the decisions had been translated into Russian.
16.  The border officer who was on duty at the Kena checkpoint that day submitted the following official report to a senior officer:
“I hereby inform you that on 11 May 2017 ... when I was examining the train [from Moscow to Kaliningrad], at around 12:00 p.m., the following Russian nationals [the applicants] submitted their documents for inspection. None of them had valid visas or residence permits, and therefore they were refused entry into the Republic of Lithuania. Seven refusal of entry decisions were issued in respect of these individuals ...
At 3.10 p.m. the individuals were transferred to border officers of Belarus via the Medininkai border checkpoint.”
17.  The applicants were detained at the border checkpoint for several hours and then they were returned to Belarus. They did not appeal against the decisions to refuse them entry into Lithuania.
18.  On 22 May 2017, at around 10.20 p.m., the applicants arrived at the railway border checkpoint in Vilnius. They submitted to the Court that they had had with them a written asylum application in Russian, prepared by a Belarussian human rights organisation, and they had given that application to the Lithuanian border guards. They provided the Court with a copy of that application and a photograph of the application, together with their train tickets, taken on what they claimed to be the premises of the border checkpoint. However, asylum proceedings were not initiated.
19.  The SBGS issued decisions on refusal of entry in respect of all seven applicants, with the same content as before (see paragraphs 10 and 15 above). The first and second applicants signed the decisions concerning them, but those concerning the children (the remaining applicants) were not signed. The decisions were written in Lithuanian and it was not indicated on them whether they had been translated into Russian.
20.  The border officer who was on duty at the Vilnius railway checkpoint that day submitted the following official report to a senior officer:
“I hereby inform you that on 22 May 2017 I was on duty at the Vilnius railway border checkpoint.
At around 10.50 p.m. ..., upon the arrival of a passenger train [from Minsk to Vilnius], it was detected that nationals of the Russian Federation did not have valid Schengen visas or residence permits ...
...
The above-mentioned individuals were returned via the Medininkai border checkpoint on 23 May 2017, at 4.24 a.m.”
The report mentioned the names of the second applicant and three of the children. The Court has not been informed if a similar report was drawn up with regard to the first applicant and the other two children.
21.  The applicants were detained at the border checkpoint overnight, and in the morning of 23 May 2017 they were returned to Belarus. They did not appeal against the decisions refusing them entry into Lithuania.
22.  Subsequently, the applicants again attempted to submit asylum applications in Poland, without success, and they lodged an application against Poland before this Court. On 16 June 2017 the Court decided to apply Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, indicating to the Polish Government that the applicants should not be removed to Belarus. However, it appears that they were removed (see M.A. and Others v. Poland, Statement of Facts and Questions to the Parties cited above).
23.  The applicants’ stay in Belarus was legal until 10 July 2017.
24.  Between October and December 2017 the first applicant’s relatives in Chechnya received several summonses, addressed to him, obliging him to appear before the police. In December 2017 a summons was delivered to the first applicant in Belarus. He went to a police station there and was told that all the applicants had to leave Belarus. They returned to Russia at the end of December 2017. Soon afterwards the first applicant was detained. The second applicant had not been informed about the exact location of the first applicant’s detention.
25.  In January 2018 the second applicant and the remaining applicants went to Belarus again and managed to submit asylum applications on the Polish border. They were admitted to a refugee reception centre in Poland to await the decision on their asylum applications.
26.  In February 2018 the first applicant was released from detention in Russia. He submitted that he had not known where he had been held and that he had been beaten up by the staff at the detention facility. He provided the Court with photographs of bruises on his body which he claimed to have sustained in detention. In March 2018 the first applicant travelled to Belarus and managed to submit an asylum application on the Polish border. He joined the second applicant and the remaining applicants at a refugee reception centre in Poland to await the decision on his asylum application.