ECHR Issues 1 Ruling and 3 Decisions in Favor of Armenia

On October 5, 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) published one ruling and three decisions in favor of the Republic of Armenia. At the same time, the ECHR issued a ruling acknowledging a violation in the case of Ghazaryan and Bayramyan against Azerbaijan.

Specifically, in the case of Gurbanov against Armenia, which concerns the alleged delays in returning the body of the applicant's son (a serviceman of an Azerbaijani armed forces special unit) to Azerbaijan by Armenia, the ECHR found that Armenia had not violated Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the Convention. Meanwhile, the application concerning Article 3 (prohibition of torture) was deemed inadmissible.

In the case of Asgarov and Veselov against Armenia, concerning the alleged violations of the convention rights of Azerbaijani saboteurs Guliev and Asgarov, the complaint was fully found inadmissible. The ECHR concluded that the applicants' husbands, Asgarov and Guliev, who had been convicted in Nagorno-Karabakh, were not in a state of absolute isolation that would deprive them of contact with their relatives. They were treated the same as other convicted individuals and were not deprived of the opportunity to submit a power of attorney on behalf of their relatives or any human rights defender to contact the ECHR.

In the cases of Aliyev against Armenia and Allahverdiyev against Armenia, which relate to several alleged violations of the applicants' convention rights, including the right to property during the four-day April war in 2016, the ECHR declared the complaints inadmissible based on its lack of jurisdiction over the alleged violations occurring during active warfare. On the same grounds, the cases of Hakobyan against Azerbaijan and Ohanyan against Azerbaijan were also found inadmissible.