The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) should not have placed a foreigner who misbehaved several times in the Enforcement and Supervision Location (HTL) in Hoogeveen in a separate room. The court in The Hague found this to be a deprivation of liberty and there was no legal basis for this. The asylum seeker will therefore receive compensation of 4,200 euros.
The refugee caused a nuisance in an asylum seekers’ center and was therefore placed in the HTL in Hoogeveen, popularly also called aso-azc. Asylum seekers live here who are temporarily no longer allowed to live in an ordinary asylum center due to causing nuisance. The man was not allowed to leave the site.
The judge did not see the fact that the man was transferred to the nuisance asylum center in Hoogeveen as a deprivation of liberty. The COA did confiscate the foreigner’s phone, inspected it and deleted videos, which was prohibited.
The foreigner misbehaved a number of times in the Hoogeveen asylum seekers’ center. The COA therefore deprived the asylum seeker of all his freedoms three times for a period of two weeks by placing him in a separate room within the complex. As a result, he was unable to go to the communal areas of the HTL during that period and his freedom of movement was limited to the separate room, the corridor to which that room adjoins and the fire escape that leads to the entrance of the HTL. The foreigner was also not offered a day program.
The court finds that these measures constituted a deprivation of liberty. This is only allowed if there is a legal reason for it and that was not the case here. The COA’s measures were therefore unlawful. That is why the man receives compensation for the time he spent in the separate room.