Azerbaijan asked the European Court to extend the deadline for responding to the complaint received from Armenia regarding the shooting of civilians in Hadrut during the 44-day war and the ‘Sardaryan v. Azerbaijan’ cases. The deadline for filing objections is coming up in the next few days.
Artak Zeynalyan (human rights defender, representative of prisoners' interests at the ECHR) - As a rule, Azerbaijan denies and takes time. Azerbaijan denies it, does not accept any fact under any circumstances. When we receive the objections of the Azerbaijani government, we will present a position.
We are talking about the shooting of 73-year-old Benik Hakobyan and 25-year-old Yuri Adamyan in Hadrut Square in 2020, and prior to that, the kidnapping of Narek Sardaryan, a resident of Nerkin Khndzoresk, by the Azerbaijani subversive group from the Nakhichevan area in the summer of 2020. The Armenian pastor was first subjected to torture, then on December 15, 2020, he was sent to Armenia with a group of Armenian prisoners. Now it is the phase of debate with Azerbaijan in the ECHR regarding these cases. The Government of Armenia has been involved as a third party in these cases, having been given the opportunity to present a legal position.
Artak Zeynalyan also refers to the war crimes committed by Azerbaijan 7 years ago these days, the cases of which have been investigated and the judgment of the European Court is awaited.
Artak Zeynalyan - About 350 or more complaints were submitted to the European Court, in the case of 26 people we presented them as victims of murder or inhumane treatment of their bodies, torture, on that basis.
Twenty-three complaints against 26 persons were submitted to the European Court of war crimes committed during the April military operations. Complaints were also submitted regarding the killing of children injured during the four-day war (in April 2016), members of the Khalapyan family from Talish. According to Zeynalyan, they also applied on behalf of potential victims, also on the basis of interference with property rights. 350 such complaints were submitted on behalf of more than 700 citizens. Azerbaijan tried to convince the ECHR that it handed over the bodies of 26 killed persons unharmed to the Armenian side.
Artak Zeynalyan - We managed to prove that there were those bodily injuries in the morgues of Azerbaijan. We noticed that there was a small sign of the forensic medical examination in the camera lens, we requested the videos through the court, they recorded the whole process for the examination. We turned the video into photos; the injuries were visible. We discovered that the coroners cover them up. They are falsifying evidence. We also submitted this to the ECHR. These are separate violations.
The ECHR has not yet processed the complaints regarding the torture and killing of Armenian servicemen during the military operations of September 2022. In the last 3 years, 6 judicial acts were issued against Azerbaijan in the European Court, none of which Baku has yet fulfilled. Zeynalyan reminds that the execution of the judgments is under the control of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The human rights defender points to the new procedure, according to which there is a possibility to apply to the European Court with the request to recognize the fact of non-fulfillment of judgments as a repeated violation.
