2 TATISHVILI v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT THE FACTS I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE 7. The applicant was born in 1939 in Tbilisi, Georgia. She continued to hold citizenship of the former USSR until 31 December 2000 and became a stateless person thereafter. The applicant lives in Moscow. 8. On 25 December 2000 the applicant applied to the passports department at the “Filevskiy Park” police station in Moscow for residence registration. She produced her USSR passport, a consent form signed by the flat-owner and certified by the housing maintenance authority, an application form for residence registration, a document showing payment of housing maintenance charges and an extract from the residents' list. 9. The director of the passport department refused to process the application for residence registration. He told the applicant that she could not get registration because she was not a relative of the flat-owner. 10. The applicant insisted on a written refusal. She was given a printed form on which a checkmark was placed next to the statement “failed to provide a complete set of documents”. The allegedly missing documents were not specified. 11. On 15 January 2001 the applicant challenged the refusal before the Dorogomilovskiy District Court of Moscow. She submitted that there had been no legal basis for a restriction on her right to obtain residence registration in the flat, expressly provided to her for that purpose by its owner, and that the registration authorities had no discretion in granting residence registration once the appropriate documents had been produced, as had been the case. 12. On 12 February 2001 the director of the passports department filed his observations on the applicant's claim. He contended that the applicant did not have Russian citizenship and that she had come originally from Georgia. Georgian citizens were required to have an appropriate visa to enter Russia which the applicant could not produce, and, in any event, the registration of foreign citizens was a matter for the Ministry of the Interior's local visas departments. 13. On 13 February 2001 the Dorogomilovskiy District Court of Moscow ruled on the applicant's claim. A representative of the flat-owner stated before the court that the applicant had been living in the flat since 2000 and that the owner had no objections to her registration. The court dismissed the applicant's claim, providing two reasons for its decision. 14. First, referring to the provisions of the Civil and Housing Codes regulating joining of family members and other persons to existing municipal-tenancy agreements and emphasising the absence of a family relationship between the applicant and the flat owner, the court ruled that