FIRST SECTION
Application no. 35587/08
Samaya ALIYEVA and Faday ALIYEV
against Azerbaijan
lodged on 16 July 2008
STATEMENT OF FACTS
THE FACTS
The applicants, Ms Samaya Aliyeva and Mr Faday Aliyev, are Azerbaijani nationals who were born in 1947 and 1942 respectively and live in Baku. They were represented before the Court by Mr I. Ashurov, a lawyer practising in Azerbaijan.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
The applicants are the parents of Elchin Aliyev (born in 1971) who had a private business in Kiev, Ukraine. On 1 June 2001 Elchin Aliyev was stabbed with a knife near a cafe in Kiev and died.
The Ukrainian law-enforcement authorities opened a criminal investigation on the same day. After initially suspecting another person, the Ukrainian authorities eventually identified R.A. as the primary suspect. R.A. was an Azerbaijani national, a general in the army, who was attending courses at the Ukrainian Military Academy at the time. According to the applicants, the investigation determined that R.A. had been present at the cafe in question at the time their son had been murdered and that on 2 June 2001 he had urgently left Ukraine for Azerbaijan. Several witnesses, including a certain M.S., were questioned by the Ukrainian prosecution authorities and identified R.A. as the applicants’ son’s murderer.
Owing to the fact that R.A. had fled Ukrainian justice and was in Azerbaijan, on 27 February 2003 the Ukrainian authorities suspended the investigation and transferred the criminal case to the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in accordance with the 1993 Minsk Convention on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Matters, to which both Ukraine and Azerbaijan were parties. On 8 April 2003 the case was assigned to the Military Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the applicants, despite their continual enquiries about any progress in the investigation, the Military Prosecutor’s Office failed to take any effective investigative steps. Following the applicants’ numerous complaints about the inactivity, on 24 February 2004 the case was transferred back to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Serious Crime Investigation Department. However, again, for the following three years, the applicants were not informed of any specific investigative steps being taken, despite the fact that they continued to complain about the inactivity to the prosecution and other authorities.
It appears from the documents in the case file that in June 2004 investigator R.H. of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan asked the Kiev City Prosecutor’s Office for legal assistance, with a view to questioning a number of witnesses and obtaining other evidence. In March 2006 the investigation was assigned to investigator R.M. of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
On 28 December 2007 the applicants lodged an application with the Nasimi District Court, complaining of the inactivity of the investigation authorities and the ineffectiveness of the investigation.
On 1 February 2008 the Nasimi District Court rejected the application. It determined that the investigation was active and that the investigation authorities had not committed any unlawful actions or omissions.
The applicants appealed. On 13 March 2008 the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeal and upheld the Nasimi District Court’s decision.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain under Articles 2, 6 and 13 of the Convention of the ineffectiveness of the criminal investigation conducted by the Azerbaijani prosecution authorities in connection with their son’s murder and of the lack of independence and impartiality of the Azerbaijani courts and prosecution authorities.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Having regard to the procedural protection of the right to life (see paragraph 104 of Salman v. Turkey [GC], no. 21986/93, ECHR 2000-VII), was the investigation in the present case by the Azerbaijani authorities in breach of Article 2 of the Convention?
2. The Government are requested to provide detailed information concerning all and any investigative and other steps undertaken by the domestic authorities. They are also requested to submit copies of (1) all procedural decisions, official documents and case-file materials relating to the criminal investigation commenced in Azerbaijan in 2003; and (2) all decisions and documents contained in the case file relating to the investigation conducted earlier by the Ukrainian authorities, including the formal decisions concerning the transfer of the case to the Azerbaijani prosecution authorities.
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