Azernews.Az

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a ruling on Thursday calling for an immediate release of the jailed Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev. The court also imposed a fine worth 25,000 euros on the Azerbaijani government, claiming that Fatullayev’s rights had been violated.
The ruling deemed as fair Fatullayev’s complaints over the alleged violation of his rights to freedom of expression, a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
The editor-in-chief of the Russian-language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani-language daily Gundalik Azerbaijan was sentenced in 2007 to eight-and-a-half years in prison on charges on defamation, incitement of ethnic hatred, threatening with terror and tax evasion. The court said it had found Azerbaijan in violation of two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was ratified by Azerbaijan in 2002.
The ECHR also claimed that the national courts had failed to amply substantiate their rulings.
Chingiz Asgarov, Azerbaijan’s authorized representative at the European court, said the government will not accept the decision. He said the European court’s issuing such orders to governments is extremely arguable, as this judiciary body only determines whether or not one’s rights have been infringed upon, while the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, which is in charge of overseeing the execution of its rulings under the rights convention, decides the action to be taken to eliminate those violations.
According to Asgarov, the European court cannot substitute the courts, administrative and other bodies of the country in question and thus turn into a first-instance court of that country. Even if irregularities are found in a given case, the European court’s rulings are rather declarative, while choosing measures to be taken to reinstate one’s violated rights is the government’s prerogative. Moreover, releasing the convicted individual strictly in accordance with a European court ruling is not envisioned in Azerbaijan’s legislation.
Asgarov added that given all this, Azerbaijan will appeal to the ECHR’s upper chamber.
The court’s ruling goes into effect unless a plea is filed to the chamber within three months since the ruling was issued.
The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Dunja Mijatovic, has called upon Azerbaijani authorities to comply with the European court’s ruling and immediately release Fatullayev from custody.
"My office has always demanded that Fatullayev's case be handled with two dimensions in mind - freedom of the media and due legal process. Now that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favor of the jailed journalist, there can be only one outcome - his immediate release," Mijatovic said.*