FIFTH SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 53602/14
Niftulla ALIMURADOV
against Azerbaijan
The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 19 March 2020 as a Committee composed of:
Gabriele Kucsko-Stadlmayer, President,
Mārtiņš Mits,
Lәtif Hüseynov, judges,
and Liv Tigerstedt, Acting Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 9 July 2014,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
FACTS AND PROCEDURE
1. The applicant, Mr Niftulla Abeydulla oglu Alimuradov, was born in 1959 and lives in Baku.
2. He was represented by Mr R. Mustafayev, a lawyer practising in Azerbaijan.
3. By an order of the District Executive Authority of 1 August 1994, the applicant was issued, under the state housing policy, an occupancy voucher (yaşayış sahəsi orderi) to an apartment in a residential building in Baku.
4. On an unspecified date in 1993 Y.A. and his family moved into the apartment. They were internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Gubadli, a region under control of Armenian military forces following the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
5. When the applicant found out that his apartment was occupied by people unknown to him, he requested that they vacate it. However, the respondents (Y.A. and his family) refused to do so, stating that they had no other place to live.
6. On 27 June 2003 the applicant obtained a certificate on the right to ownership of the apartment.
7. The applicant brought an action, requesting the court to evict the respondents from the apartment.
8. On 20 November 2003 the Sumgayit City Court granted the applicant’s request. The court found that the applicant was the owner of the apartment and ordered the eviction of Y.A. and his family from it. However, the court further held that the execution of the judgment should be postponed until the problems of the IDPs were resolved.
9. The applicant’s complaints under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention concerning the non-enforcement of the domestic decision were communicated to the Azerbaijani Government (“the Government”).
THE LAW
10. The Government submitted that the applicant’s case was similar to the case of Akimova v. Azerbaijan (no. 19853/03, 27 September 2007) and that the applicant had failed to lodge an appeal against the first-instance court’s judgment. He therefore had failed to exhaust domestic remedies.
11. The applicant maintained his complaint. He submitted that, in general, the domestic authorities did not enforce judgments concerning the eviction of IDPs and his case should be considered as part of the widespread problem of non-enforcement in this connection. Moreover, the applicant expected that the IDPs’ problems would be resolved, thus, he waited for a solution to the problem.
12. The Court reiterates that in order to comply with the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies referred to in Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, normal recourse should be had by an applicant to remedies which are available and sufficient to afford redress in respect of the breaches alleged (see, among other authorities, Assenov and Others v. Bulgaria, 28 October 1998, § 85, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998‑VIII).
13. The Court notes that in the present case the execution of the judgment to evict the IDPs illegally occupying the applicant’s apartment was postponed in the judgment itself. However, the applicant failed to lodge an appeal against the first-instance court’s judgment before the appellate court and the Supreme Court. Nor did he demonstrate that the domestic remedies at his disposal were inadequate and/or ineffective in the particular circumstances of his case, or that there existed special circumstances exempting him from the requirement to pursue those remedies. The Court therefore finds that the applicant cannot be considered to have complied with the rule on exhaustion of domestic remedies laid down in Article 35 of the Convention. His complaints under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention must therefore be rejected under Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention for non-exhaustion of domestic remedies.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 9 April 2020.
Liv TigerstedtGabriele Kucsko-Stadlmayer
Acting Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy