Information Note on the Court’s case-law 193
February 2016
Huseynli and Others v. Azerbaijan - 67360/11, 67964/11 and 69379/11
Judgment 11.2.2016 [Section V]
Article 11
Article 11-1
Freedom of peaceful assembly
Administrative conviction and detention of opposition members aimed at preventing them from participating in a demonstration and punishing them for their political activity: violation
Facts – The year 2011 was marked by an increased number of opposition demonstrations in Azerbaijan, mainly in Baku. The applicants, who were members of the main opposition parties or groups, had participated in the demonstrations and had been arrested and convicted a number of times as a result. They had intended to attend a demonstration scheduled for 2 April 2011 and one of the applicants was involved in its organisation. The municipal authority refused to allow the demonstration to be held at the place indicated by the organisers, and proposed that it be held at another location on the outskirts of Baku. The Ministry of Internal Affairs warned the public that attempts to hold a protest rally in central Baku would be prevented. Nevertheless, the organisers decided to hold the demonstration in central Baku, and information about it was disseminated via Facebook and the press. Two days before the scheduled demonstration, all three applicants were arrested, convicted of public-order offences and sentenced to seven days’ administrative detention. They appealed unsuccessfully.
Before the European Court, the applicants alleged that the true reason behind their arrest and conviction had been to punish them for their political activity and to prevent them from attending the demonstration of 2 April 2011.
Law – Article 11: According to a number of international and domestic reports, at the material time the authorities had resorted to various seemingly arbitrary measures to quell support for the opposition and to prevent people from participating in demonstrations, such as pre-emptive and/or retaliatory arrests and convictions, police warnings not to attend a protest rally, closing down organisations working on human rights and democracy or demolishing buildings where they were located.
A number of elements in the instant cases led the Court to conclude that the administrative proceedings against the applicants had sought to deter them from demonstrating and to punish them for doing so. Firstly, the applicants’ affiliation with the opposition was generally known. One of them held a high position in his party. Two of the applicants had been candidates in parliamentary elections. All three had actively participated in various protests held by the opposition. Secondly, two days before the scheduled demonstration all three applicants had been sentenced to seven days’ administrative detention on dubious grounds and in similar circumstances. One was accused of disobeying an order to show an identity document after allegedly being mistaken for a person on a wanted list. The other two applicants had been accused of swearing aloud at no one in particular and for no apparent reason. It was remarkable that neither of those charges, which were practically identical, provided sufficient details of the acts of which the applicants were accused. They were couched in standardised and vague terms and remained unclear and unexplained at the trial. The findings of fact in the applicants’ cases had been reached by the domestic court following brief trials, were based solely on the materials provided by the police and, like those materials, lacked any details and were strikingly succinct. The resulting court decisions appeared to have been a mere unquestioned recapitulation of the circumstances and the charges as presented in the relevant police reports and did not appear to have been reached as a result of an objective and thorough judicial examination.
There were cogent elements that prompted the Court to doubt the credibility of the administrative proceedings against the applicants and to draw strong, clear and concordant inferences to the effect that the applicants’ conviction and ensuing detention were aimed at preventing them from participating in the demonstration and punishing them for having participated in opposition protests in general. Those measures, imposed in reliance on legal provisions which had no connection with their intended purpose, had amounted to an interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of peaceful assembly and could only be characterised as arbitrary and unlawful. They had had a chilling effect on the applicants and a serious potential to deter other opposition supporters and the public at large from attending demonstrations and, more generally, from participating in open political debate.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
The Court also found, unanimously, a violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 and a violation of Article 5 § 1 in respect of all three applicants.
Article 41: EUR 12,000 each in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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