The ECHR awarded compensation to Azerbaijani activist Abdul Abilov.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has found a violation of Azerbaijani blogger Abdul Abilov's right to a fair trial and ordered him to pay €4,100 in compensation.
As reported by the Caucasian Knot, blogger Abdul Abilov was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison on May 27, 2014, on charges of large-scale drug possession. He denied his guilt, claiming that his prosecution was related to his dissatisfaction with the authorities, which he expressed on social media. Specifically, he authored the Facebook pages "Stop the Toadies!", which criticized officials, and "End Election Fraud!", which contained information about violations of the law following the October 9, 2013, presidential elections. In March 2017, Abilov was pardoned after serving more than three years in prison.
The European Court of Human Rights today announced its decision on Abdul Abilov's complaint against the government of Azerbaijan.
Abilov, an active blogger and author of critical publications about the country's authorities, was arrested in November 2013 on charges of possessing and selling heroin. Abilov claimed the drug charges were fabricated to punish him for his social media activities, according to a ruling published today on the court's website.
The activist appealed the verdict in higher courts. After Abilov's original lawyer was disciplinary suspended from his professional activities, the blogger retained a new lawyer, but the cassation court held the hearing without the new lawyer's presence and without informing him of the hearing date.
"It is difficult to imagine how the applicant could have exercised his rights without the proper notification and presence of his new lawyer," the court ruling stated.
The ECHR found a violation of Abilov's right to a fair trial (Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights). However, the court found no violations under Articles 10 and 18 of the Convention, which concern freedom of expression and the alleged political motivation for the prosecution. The judges found that the applicant had not provided sufficient evidence that the criminal case was related to his blogging activities. The ECHR ordered Azerbaijan to pay Abilov €3,600 in compensation for moral damages and €500 in legal costs.
Although the ECHR has found a violation of Article 18 of the Convention in several cases against Azerbaijan—that is, the presence of political motives for persecution—it has never found this to be the case simultaneously with a violation of Article 6, noted lawyer Khalid Bagirov, who represented Abilov at the European Court of Human Rights.
“Generally, the ECHR almost never finds a violation of Article 18 together with Article 6, because they address different issues. Article 6 concerns the fairness of the trial: compliance with procedures, judicial independence, and the correctness of the proceedings. If these requirements are violated, the ECHR typically limits itself to concluding that the trial was unfair. Article 18 is a different level of investigation, dealing with the state’s motives, that is, with the reason for the prosecution in the first place. Here, it is necessary to prove that the case was used not for the sake of justice, but, for example, for political pressure. Doing this in practice is extremely difficult. It is not enough to point out the court’s errors; it is necessary to prove the presence of an ulterior motive on the part of the state,” Bagirov told the Caucasian Knot.
According to the lawyer, in most cases the ECHR limits itself to Article 6 and does not address Article 18. "The ECHR only turns to it in cases where it is clear that persecution was clearly used as an instrument of pressure and cannot be explained by ordinary procedural violations," Bagirov explained.
In any case, he noted, even the recognition of a violation of Abilov's rights under Article 6 confirms the unlawfulness of his criminal prosecution in Azerbaijan. At the same time, the lawyer considered the amount of monetary compensation awarded to the applicant insufficient, given that he had unjustifiably spent more than three years in prison.
Azerbaijan's authorized representative to the ECHR, Chingiz Askerov, was unavailable for comment.