The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers has strongly urged the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately restore the rights of human rights activists and government critics, as required by the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The Committee adopted an Interim Resolution (*) on the Mammadli group of cases against Azerbaijan at its latest meeting to supervise the execution of ECHR judgments.

The Committee of Ministers recalled that, in respect of each applicant in this group of cases, the European Court found a violation of Article 18, in conjunction with Article 5, of the European Convention on Human Rights, revealing “a troubling pattern of arbitrary arrest and detention of government critics, civil society activists and human-rights defenders through retaliatory prosecutions and misuse of criminal law in defiance of the rule of law”.

The Committee further recalled the decisions adopted by the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan quashing the convictions of Ilgar Mammadov, Rasul Jafarov, Rashad Hasanov, Zaur Gurbanli, Uzeyir Mammadli and Rashadat Akhundov and awarding them compensation for non-pecuniary damage resulting from their unlawful arrest and imprisonment. In 2020-2022, the Committee of Ministers subsequently closed its supervision of those cases.

However, the Committee of Ministers expressed profound concern that – despite its repeated calls – the remaining nine applicants’ guilty verdicts still stand and there is no indication that any further progress has been made in their cases before the Supreme Court, some of which have now been pending for four years.

The Committee once again stressed the need for quashing the applicants’ convictions, erasing them from their criminal records and eliminating all other consequences of the criminal charges brought against them, including by fully restoring their civil and political rights.

The continuing failure to resolve the applicants’ cases is particularly worrying as the Court revealed underlying political motivations for the unfounded criminal proceedings against the applicants, the Committee of Ministers underlined.

The Committee strongly urged the Azerbaijani authorities to put an immediate end to the situation by ensuring that all necessary measures are taken in respect of the applicants as a matter of priority.