It is believed that the European Court of Human Rights judge who successfully stopped the UK’s migrant flight to Rwanda is from Hungary or Liechtenstein.
Despite UK courts indicating the flight could go ahead, the anonymous judge signed clearance on an urgent 11th-hour injunction from the ECHR against an asylum seeker slated to be transported to Rwanda.
After the court allowed an urgent temporary remedy in the case of the Iraqi national, all migrants were taken from the plane at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire on Tuesday night.
A number of Conservative politicians were outraged by the judgment, with Home Secretary Priti Patel calling the European Court of Human Rights intervention “very shocking.”
The ECHR then made another surprising move, refusing to publish the identity of the judge who signed off on the injunction, sparking an open justice debate.
A representative for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which was formed by the Council of Europe and has no ties to the EU, previously told MailOnline that the judge would not be named, stating that this was their policy on interim injunctions.
Some speculated that Russian judge Mikhail Lobov, who continues to sit on the Strasbourg court despite Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe in March, was the one who signed the order, but the ECHR flatly refuted this.
The Daily Telegraph reports that such restrictions can only be approved by one of three judges.
One of them is British judge Tim Eicke QC, who was purportedly prevented from hearing the case due to the fact that the challenge was brought against the UK government.
According to the paper, the only remaining judges who could sign off on the injunction were Hungary’s appointment, Peter Paczolay, a former head of Hungary’s President’s Office, or Liechtenstein’s Carlo Ranzoni.
Despite UK courts indicating the flight could go forward, the judge signed clearance on an urgent 11th-hour injunction from the ECHR to an asylum seeker about to be flown to Rwanda.