Anar Mammadli Urges Council of Europe to Demand Azerbaijan Executes Strasbourg Court Decision on His Case

Anar Mammadli

Anar Mammadli, the head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDSC), currently held in Baku SIZO-1 (Pre-trial Detention Center No. 1), has sent an appeal to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe regarding the non-execution by the government of Azerbaijan of the individual measures set out in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgment in the case of "Mammadli v. Azerbaijan."

It is worth noting that Mammadli was arrested and convicted in 2013 on economic charges, the political motivation of which was confirmed by the ECHR decision in 2018.

In his statement, Mammadli points out that the government "deliberately delayed the issuance of an acquittal" in the previous criminal case against him. By failing to execute the key condition of the aforementioned ECHR verdict, the Azerbaijani authorities misled the Committee of Ministers, "falsely asserting that the conviction had been quashed," the activist further notes. "As a result, the previous illegal conviction is still being considered an aggravating circumstance in the new criminal case filed against me on fabricated charges," Mammadli emphasizes in his statement.

Mammadli further describes the continuing non-execution of the seven-year-old ECHR judgment as a situation where "the non-executed judgment has itself turned into a form of punishment." He asserts that this not only violates his personal rights but also constitutes an "open challenge to the authority and reliability of the Strasbourg system." According to him, such behavior "creates a dangerous continental-scale precedent" and sends the wrong signal to other states that ECHR judgments can be disregarded.

Mammadli notes that he has been held in the Baku pre-trial detention center for over 540 days, and that national courts have extended his pre-trial detention four times, each time citing only the "gravity of the charges filed." He stresses that none of these decisions met fair trial standards, and the appeal courts upheld them using similar boilerplate reasoning.

He emphasizes that this issue now transcends his personal case and concerns the credibility of the entire European human rights protection system. "What is at stake is not only the execution of individual judgments but also confidence in the entire enforcement system of the European Convention on Human Rights," Mammadli notes.

He calls on the Committee of Ministers to adopt a firmer position, including through the adoption of a new interim resolution establishing clear criteria and deadlines for the execution of the judgment. "At this critical moment, the Committee of Ministers must maintain a principled stance amidst an increasingly large-scale assault on democratic values and ensure confidence in the Convention system," Mammadli believes.

"Political imprisonment is not only a violation of an individual's rights but also a direct threat to democratic values and the European legal order itself. The ongoing delays in executing these judgments undermine the integrity of the entire Convention system," Mammadli concludes.

Anar Mammadli, head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center (EMDSC), was detained in Baku on April 29, 2024, and arrested on smuggling charges as part of the case against employees of the Abzas Media publication. Mammadli's case was later separated into individual proceedings. On April 8, freelance journalist Anar Abdulla (Abdullayev) was summoned to the Baku police, where he was charged in the case of Anar Mammadli. In addition to smuggling, they were charged under 7 other articles of the Criminal Code.

Abdulla was initially placed under police supervision, but in August, the court ordered his arrest.

Both defendants are recognized as political prisoners by human rights defenders. Mammadli is known as a human rights defender and election expert. The organizations he led have monitored elections in Azerbaijan since the early 2000s.