The European Court of Human Rights said on Thursday it had asked the British government to answer questions about alleged Russian interference in the election following a legal challenge.
The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of the British parliament said in 2020 that it could not draw firm conclusions about Russian interference, including in the 2016 Brexit vote or the referendum on Scottish independence two years earlier.
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But the report said the government under Prime Minister Boris Johnson had “dropped the ball”, and critics pointed to the Conservative party’s ties to wealthy Russian donors as one explanation for the lack of official action against Moscow.
The right to free and fair elections
The ECHR’s response follows a claim brought by a cross-party group of three MPs after the High Court in London dismissed the case in 2021.
He claimed that the government’s failure to investigate “credible allegations” of interference in the electoral system violated its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights which protect the right to free and fair elections.
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In a letter to MPs, the ECHR has accepted the claim through the first stage of the court process and said it now requires the UK government to answer five questions by the end of April.
The trio – Ben Bradshaw, from the Labor Party, Caroline Lucas, from the Green Party and Alyn Smith from the Scottish National Party (SNP) – were part of a group of six who lost their bid to bring a High Court challenge in June 2021 against Johnson over his “failure”. which is alleged to be investigating possible Russian interference in the British election.
Russia vs England
The democracy campaign group The Citizens, which has worked with parliamentarians on the case, compared Britain’s response to the United States, where multiple investigations concluded Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The case is about protecting “our political integrity”, not reversing Brexit, Bradshaw said in a statement on Friday.
“Some of us have been warning about (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s real intentions for more than 10 years.
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“We know that their long-term strategy is to destroy and divide Western democracies.”
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