Azerbaijani courts ignore European Convention - human rights defender

Baku/21.04.17/Turan: Litigations in Azerbaijan over civil and religious activists, journalists and bloggers are conducted with gross violations of the rights of accused and procedural norms, reads the message of the Center for Monitoring Political Prisoners on the results of monitoring trials in the first quarter of 2017. The human rights organization came to these conclusions based on the monitoring of three processes: the Nardaran events, the case against journalist Fikret Faramazoglu, and blogger Mehman Huseynov.

In addition, the Monitoring Center for Political Prisoners also monitored the activities of the theologian Sardar Babayev, the PFPA activist Fuad Ahmadli, the financial director of the Azadlyg newspaper Faig Amirov, the arrested immigrants from the Jebrail region.

"These persons have not yet been brought to trial. While trials on their cases were held closed in the order of judicial supervision. But the information coming from the lawyers testifies to the violation of the elementary rights of the accused," said the head of the Center Elshan Hasanov to the correspondent of Turan.

According to him, courts generally reject all petitions of lawyers of political prisoners, violating Article 6 (the right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, judges ignore complaints of torture and lack of quality medical care, which is a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the Convention. Moreover, the courts ignore the obvious violations of the rights of the accused under articles 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion), and 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention.

"Ultimately, Article 7 (Punishment solely on the basis of the law) of the Convention is violated.

In general, all trials are held in one, a template scenario, which speaks of the "controlled" and customized nature of the proceedings. All the accused in these cases are recognized as political prisoners by local and international organizations," Hasanov said. The Center for Monitoring Political Prisoners was established in October 2014 by a group of former "prisoners of conscience." - 06B--