European court issues three rulings on Azerbaijan

The European Court of Human Rights issued three rulings on Azerbaijan on Thursday.

One of the cases was brought by Elchin Abbasov who maintained that his rights to fair trial set forth in a relevant European convention had been violated during the consideration of an appeal on his sentence in the absence of the defendant. The court upheld Abbasov’s plea and ruled that the Azerbaijani government is required to pay him 1,000 euros in damages.

Another ruling concerned a plea filed by the head of the Man and Society non-governmental organization Ismayil Ismayilov, who maintained that his rights to freedom of assembly had been infringed upon. The judge confirmed that the Justice Ministry had failed to timely consider his application to register the group and ordered compensation worth the same amount.

In a similar development, the court upheld a plea by Natalia Rahimova concerning purported violation of Article 6 of the European convention on the rights to fair trial. The ruling did not cite damages to be paid to the plaintiff.*