Urgently remove the "aquarium" from the courtroom

Looking through photos from the hall of the Baku Court of Serious Crimes, Ombudsman of Armenia Arman Tatoyan made a statement as follows. He drew attention to photos of June 2 where the saboteurs Ludvig Mkrtchyan and Alyosha Khosrovyan were kept in a glass-enclosed protective cabin (aquarium) which is violation of human dignity. Tatoyan appealed to international authorities, and his supporters claim that the rights of Armenian saboteurs are violated in Azerbaijan.

In turn, Lawyer Javad Javadov does not think that the detention of the defendants in a covered protective booth is contrary to the practice of European judicial proceedings. Illegal in Europe is an iron cage in a courtroom.

In an interview to Turan, human rights activist Arif Yunusov categorically disagrees with this statement. He recalls numerous precedents when lawyers of the countries on the post-Soviet expanse (in Georgia, Armenia and Russia) on behalf of their clients (cases of Ramishvili and Koheidze v. Georgia in 2009; Ashot Harutyunyan v. Armenia in 2010; Khodorkovsky v. Russia in 2011; Kovyazin v. Russia in 2018, etc.) filed lawsuits to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on celling in aquariums and even managed to win such cases. The ECHR ruled that the celling of such defendants in cages (iron or glass, so-called aquariums) in the courtroom is a gross violation of Article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Following all these decisions of the ECHR in 2018, a draft decision was submitted to the State Duma of Russia to ban the celling of the accused in glass or iron booths. The project has now passed all instances, and is at the final stage.

Moreover, the Azerbaijani lawyers defending the defendants Arif and Leyla Yunus filed petitions against the celling them in glass booths during the court sessions.

The most famous case of this kind is the trial of the terrorist Breivik in Norway who killed 77 children and injured 151 people, and did not deny it. During the trial, he sat next to a lawyer. Not in handcuffs, in a suit, and this is perceived in Europe normally.

"When my wife and I were invited as witnesses in the case of Ilham Aliyev against French journalists in 2017 (they called him a dictator), I began to talk about how our courts were held, including those on glass booths. The judge was shocked, could not believe it for a long time and finally decided in favor of the journalists. Therefore, in Azerbaijan, you can laugh at all this, but abroad it is perceived and will be perceived as a gross violation of their rights," the human rights activist said.

Arif Yunusov warns that when the ECHR will consider a complaint of the Armenian saboteurs after their sentencing in Baku, European judges will pay attention to the detention of the defendants in aquariums. Then this fact will be sufficient to pass a verdict on the release of the saboteurs.

Arif Yunusov works in close contact with the ECHR and is confident that due to the illiteracy of our judicial officials, their ignorance of modern European legal standards, the Armenian saboteurs will be acquitted in the European Court. Therefore, aquariums from Azerbaijani vessels should be removed immediately.

"We create problems for ourselves out of nowhere, and then we shout that Europe plays duplicitous games," Yunus concluded.