Government Presents Weak Arguments on Prisoners' Issue to ECHR, Says Taguhi Tovmasyan

The newspaper 'Zhoghovurd' reports: 'The European Court of Human Rights has rejected the request from the representative of the Armenian government. We attempted to present requests to the court to compel Azerbaijan to halt judicial processes and present the materials of the criminal case to the Armenian government. We demanded that if the court does not take such measures, then through these judicial processes, the right to a fair trial is being violated on a daily basis.

We requested that the court prevent these violations and apply interim measures in line with the logic of preventing ongoing violations during the trial, based on the premise that the failure to provide the rights guaranteed in Article 6 of the Convention will ultimately lead to a violation of Article 2. The court rejected our request, which we had submitted on June 30. We received the rejection on July 2,' stated a representative of the Armenian government at the ECHR yesterday.

Why did we receive a rejection? Regarding this question, 'Zhoghovurd' conducted a brief interview with independent MP and candidate from the 'I Have Honor' alliance, Taguhi Tovmasyan. 'I carefully followed the explanations of the Armenian government representative regarding the request made to the ECHR as a measure to secure the application, but there was no clarification on what basis the ECHR rejected our request, while this is a crucial issue. Were our evidence insufficient, the justifications weak? Typically, in such cases, the ECHR rejects requests for being unfounded. So what do we have? Apparently, neither the Armenian Prosecutor's Office, which claimed to have initiated criminal cases regarding war crimes (notably, our prisoners’ issue is also a war crime), nor the Ministry of Justice, nor the government in general, which claimed to be working tirelessly on the prisoners’ issue, gathered or ensured sufficient evidence and legal grounds.

Recall that after the April 2016 Four-Day War, in 2019, this government was also unable to substantiate that a family of an Armenian, who had their ears cut off, was tortured. In other words, this government has failed to address the investigation of the torture and murder cases from 2016 at the ECHR. I believe if this negligence continues to manifest during the main trial of the prisoners’ case, we will completely lose our chances of protecting the rights of our captives in the future. Any rejection from the European Court signifies that weak arguments have been presented; this should always be kept in mind.'