5.  The applicant was born in 1968 and lives in Zhangala, Kazakhstan.
6.  In June 2000 the applicant moved from Kazakhstan to Russia, where he married Ms G.K., a Russian citizen, with whom he had two daughters who were born in 2000 and 2002. The applicant and his family lived in the settlement of Slantseviy Rudnik in the Saratov Region. The applicant regularly visited his relatives in Kazakhstan.
7.  The applicant lived in Russia under regularly extended temporary (three‑year) residence permits. On 20 August 2013 the Department of the Federal Migration Service of the Saratov Region issued decision no. 32469 granting the applicant yet another three-year residence permit, valid until 20 August 2016.
8.  On 12 April 2014 the applicant was returning from Kazakhstan to Russia through the “Ozinki” border crossing in the Saratov Region when the border control department of the Russian Federal Security Service informed him that he had been denied re-entry to the Russian Federation. According to the notice handed to the applicant at the border crossing, he was subject to exclusion from Russia. He was banned from re-entering Russia until January 2030 on the basis of a report (представление) dated 14 January 2014 from the Saratov Region department of the Federal Security Service (Федеральная служба безопасности (ФСБ)) (hereinafter “the FSS”), drafted pursuant to section 27 § 1 of the Entry Procedure Act, that is to say “for the purposes of ensuring the defensive capacity or security of the State, or protecting public order or health”. No other explanation was given.
9.  On 13 May 2014 the applicant, through his representative, lodged an appeal against the exclusion order with the Frunzenskiy District Court of Saratov (hereinafter “the District Court”). In his appeal the applicant requested that the exclusion order be overruled and the ban lifted as this measure had adversely affected his family life. The applicant stated, in particular, that since 2000 he had been married to a Russian national and had two children who were also Russian nationals. He added that he had no record of administrative violations or criminal offences and that he was unaware of the reasons for the exclusion order.
10.  The District Court forwarded the applicant’s appeal to the Saratov Regional Court (hereinafter “the Regional Court”) as under the domestic regulations regional courts were to examine cases involving State secrets.
11.  On 25 July 2014 the Regional Court examined the applicant’s complaint. At the hearing, in reply to a question from the representative of the applicant concerning the actual basis for the applicant’s exclusion and the sixteen-year re-entry ban, the FSS’s representatives replied “[T]he actual grounds for the ban cannot be disclosed in the interests of State security, which have priority in the Russian Federation over the rights of foreign citizens ... What exactly Mr Kamenov did cannot be disclosed as this information constitutes a State secret ...”
12.  On the same date, 25 July 2014, the Regional Court upheld the applicant’s exclusion until 2030. In its decision it did not cite any documents submitted by the FSS as serving as the basis for the ban, apart from noting that the measure had been imposed on the basis of the report of 14 January 2014 and the relevant internal instructions of the FSS. According to the court, the report of 14 January 2014 contained “some operational activities data” which had not been included in the case file (although it had been “reviewed” by the court) as it constituted a State secret. The court neither specified the nature of that data nor provided any details regarding its origins or the circumstances of its collection. The court further noted that the appropriate procedure had been followed and stated that “Mr Kamenov’s request that the State body [the FSS] that issued the [exclusion] decision be obliged to rescind it cannot be granted as the court [can only verify] the lawfulness of [the procedure of] the taking of such a decision. As regards any overruling of that decision, such competence lies with the executive body that took it”. As to whether the exclusion order amounted to an interference with the applicant’s family life, the court stated that the impugned decision “contained information on the basis of which the FSS concluded that the actions of Mr Kamenov had threatened the national security of the Russian Federation. Therefore, the public interest prevailed over the private interest of the applicant”.
13.  The applicant’s representative lodged an appeal against the above decision with the Administrative Cases Chamber of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (hereinafter “the Supreme Court”) stating, among other things, that in spite of the fact that he had submitted a signed undertaking of confidentiality to the Regional Court, he had not been given the chance to familiarise himself with the contents of the FSS report of 14 January 2014 and the other documents which had served as the basis for the exclusion and that the actual reasons for that measure remained unknown to the applicant. He stressed that the applicant had never committed criminal or administrative violations and that the exclusion and the re-entry ban had disrupted the applicant’s family life.
14.  On 24 December 2014 the Supreme Court upheld the decision of 25 July 2014 stating that the Regional Court had duly examined the necessary legal basis for the exclusion and that its decision had been lawful and reasonable. The Supreme Court did not specify the evidence which had served as the basis for the FSS report of 14 January 2014, nor did it make any reference to its contents. As for the applicant’s complaint concerning the interference order with his right to respect for family life caused by the sixteen-year exclusion, the Supreme Court left this unexamined.
15.  In reply to the Court’s request for the information and documents that had served as the basis for the applicant’s exclusion, the Government furnished copies of the courts’ decisions in the applicant’s case and a copy of the records of the hearing on 25 July 2014 by the Regional Court of the applicant’s appeal. In addition, the Government submitted copies of the decisions of the Regional Court taken between 2011 and 2015 in respect of the following decisions taken by the domestic authorities: eight decisions granting appeals against expulsion orders imposed on account of criminal convictions and violations of immigration regulations, and three decisions granting appeals against exclusion orders and re-entry bans imposed on account of violations of immigration regulations. None of the documents furnished by the Government concerned an appeal against an exclusion order and/or a re-entry ban imposed on the grounds of national security.