Wednesday, January 26 2005 15:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Strasbourg: The European Court of Human Rights today (Jan 26, 2005) condemned the Czech republic for holding two Indian citizens for 30 months while awaiting deportation.

It awarded Balbir Singh, 49, and 50-year-old Bakhschisch Singh, 5,000 euros ($ 6,500) each in damages after agreeing with their argument that, "Their detention pending deportation had been unlawful and disproportionate, particularly on account of its excessive length."

The two men were arrested in 1996, prosecuted for assisting others to cross the frontier, jailed for 21 months and ordered deported. But because of the detention on top of their prison sentence, they were not released until February 2001.

Despite the deportation order, one of the men still lives in the Czech republic and the other is resident in neighboring Slovakia.