Azerbaijan Submits Complaints to ECHR Concerning July Events and First Nagorno-Karabakh War

The Azerbaijani side may face an issue of limitation in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). This was stated by Yeghishe Kirakosyan, the representative of the Armenian government at the ECHR, in an interview with Sputnik Armenia, commenting on the content of the complaint submitted by Azerbaijan to the ECHR on January 15.

“The complaint presented by the Azerbaijani side relates not only to the July and autumn events of 2020 but also to incidents and consequences of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. They also mention the rights of the missing persons since the first war, specific alleged violations of that time, which I think gives considerable food for thought from a legal standpoint,” Kirakosyan said, recalling the recent rejection by the ECHR of a complaint regarding Karvachar and not ruling out that in this case, too, the court will consider the issue of limitation periods.

“That last case is a very clear example where the court essentially drew the temporal boundary and emphasized the fact that up until that point, they had the opportunity to submit a complaint but did not do so,” Kirakosyan noted. He also emphasized that unlike Azerbaijan, the Armenian side has submitted complaints exclusively related to the 44-day war. The complete complaint from Armenia was submitted to the ECHR on February 4, 2021.

It is noteworthy that on February 18, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a complaint submitted against Armenia by Azerbaijani citizen Samadov, in which he claimed that he lost his property located in the Karvachar region in 1993. The European Court had taken into account that the complaint was filed in 2008, that is, more than 6 years after Armenia's ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights and more than 15 years after allegedly being deprived of the property. Based on this reasoning, the ECHR rejected the complaint, considering the limitation period expired.