Defence appeals to ECtHR against verdict in Said Amirov's case

The defence will file appeals against the verdict in the Said Amirov's case to the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court (SC) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This was announced by Vladimir Postanyuk, the head of the team of advocates.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that today, the Supreme Court has reduced the sentence to Yusup Djaparov, convicted in the case against Said Amirov, the former Mayor of Makhachkala, down to 17 years and 10 months of imprisonment. The rest of the sentence was left unchanged. Meanwhile, the judicial panel of the Russian Supreme Court has dismissed the motions filed by the advocates and the convicts' requests to postpone the court hearing.

According to Vladimir Postanyuk, the defence intends to use all methods to challenge the verdict. "We have two options. The first means appealing to the national law the Presidium of the Supreme Court. And the second and, probably, the main option is to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). We will use both options. Meanwhile, I'm more optimistic about the European Court," Vladimir Postanyuk has explained.

According to him, the advocates only need to get the definition of appeal from the Russian SC.

Let us remind you that on August 12, 2013, the defence of Said Amirov, who was then kept in custody in the criminal case of organization of a terror act, filed a complaint to the ECtHR and claimed the illegality of the election of pre-trial restriction measure against the defendant. In November 2014, the ECtHR found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of torture) and obliged the Russian government to pay 15,000 euros of compensation. However, according to the advocate, the ECtHR's decision has not been executed.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.