Human rights lawyer Fariz Namazli posted on Thursday that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) dropped four applicants’ cases against Azerbaijan from the docket after Baku admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay a fine.
Namazli stated that on 28 May, the ECHR issued four judgments against Azerbaijan in 13 different cases.
‘In two of these judgments, the court accepted a friendly settlement between the parties, and in two cases, the Azerbaijan government recognised its own mistake, and after that, these cases were removed from the list. These cases also include the application of Aykhan Israfilov, a member of the Board of the Working Group’, he wrote.
According to Namazli, the court removed Israfilov’s case from the list because the Azerbaijani government admitted wrongdoing in the case.
In light of Azerbaijan’s admission of guilt, Namazli said the court settled for fining Azerbaijan €2,700 ($3,100) in compensation for moral damages and €450 ($510) in compensation for legal fees.
Israfilov was detained in August 2023 on accusations of storage and distribution of drugs and was sentenced to three years in prison. He is one of four members of the Labour Desk Trade Union Confederation who were arrested.
Ismi Aghayev
Israfilov’s mother, Amina Israfilova, told OC Media that she hoped her son would be released on 28 May.
‘I thought that as he was detained for three years, and in August he will have spent two years in prison. Despite that, I never believed this accusation, but I believed that since the bulk of his prison sentence had passed, he would be released’, Aykhan’s mother said, referencing a recent mass amnesty issued by President Ilham Aliyev.
Earlier this week, Aliyev issued a pardon decree releasing 175 people from serving the remainder of their sentences.
‘It is difficult for me to go to meet Ayhan because I am disabled, and my son Aykhan was mainly looking after me. But now everything has changed. My monthly pension is ₼300 ($176), and covers the costs of the prison, this amount is very small’, she emphasised.
Will Israfilov be released?
The apparent decision from the ECHR comes after a little more than a month after Aliyev questioned the court’s relevance and if Baku would continue to adhere to its decisions.
In April, Aliyev stated that ‘if Azerbaijan could not participate in the election of judges for the ECHR, then it would consider all ECHR decisions to be invalid’.
According to a press release by the official presidential administration, Aliyev argued that ‘none of the decisions of the European Court are valid for us because we were deprived of our voting rights’.
Aliyev’s speech was a response to a January 2024 decision by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to approve the credentials of the Azerbaijani delegation, citing Baku’s failure to fulfill its basic obligations arising from membership in the Council of Europe.
Namazli told the independent media outlet Toplum TV that the Azerbaijan government from March refused to pay compensations to the applicants by the ECHR decision.
‘This is not only a technical evasion of the ECHR decisions, but also a direct and open evasion of the country's international legal obligations’, he said, adding that the government also refuses to answer the ECHR's questions on cases at the fact-finding and preparatory stage.
‘In several cases under my jurisdiction, the government has not expressed any attitude towards the questions submitted to the ECHR, including the comments I submitted. This should be considered not only an evasion of decisions, but also a disregard and disrespect for the procedure, powers and general activities of the European Court’, Namazli stated.
Namazli told OC Media that one of the obligations of the member states to the Council of Europe is that ‘if the European Court finds a violation of the convention, then the cases in these states must be reviewed, and this is also provided for in the legislation of Azerbaijan’.
‘In the current case, the government of Azerbaijan made a unilateral statement in which it recognized the violation of Israfilov's right and the European Court accepted this statement. However, the problem is that this complaint of Israfilov is related to the illegality of the preventive measure chosen against him during the investigation, when he was arrested’, Namazli said,
He emphasised that the arrest of Israfilov during the preliminary investigation is considered illegal, saying that ‘there is a guilty verdict against him that has entered into legal force’.
Namazli stressed that this decision has not been overturned, and they will appeal this case in the near future.
‘Therefore, the execution of the current decision of the European Court is impossible. An exception could be made here if the court had considered the arrest of Israfilov to be politically motivated, however, the court did not accept Israfilov’s case to be politically motivated, but only began to conduct an investigation under violation of liberty’, he said.
‘I'm proud of my son because he defended the rights of the workers. I know he did not do anything bad. And I think he will be released’, told Israfilov’s mother.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comments from Human rights lawyer Fariz Namazli.
Aytan Farhadova
