Communicated on 4 December 2018
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 60421/11
Alovsat OSMANLI
against Azerbaijan
lodged on 2 September 2011
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns civil defamation proceedings instituted against the applicant, an independent expert in public education, by the Educational Problems Institute (“EPI”) of the Ministry of Education, in connection with the statements made by the applicant in an article titled “Mardanov’s Black Hundreds”, which was part of a series of articles by the applicant criticising the public education authorities published in the Azadliq newspaper. EPI claimed that the article contained unproved statements damaging to its professional reputation. The courts ruled in the plaintiff’s favour and ordered the applicant to issue a public apology and a refutation of his statements. In his domestic appeals, the applicant complained inter alia that the EPI, as a public authority, could not suffer damage to professional reputation, and that the domestic courts failed to make a distinction between facts and value judgments.
QUESTIONS tO THE PARTIES
1. Has there been an interference with the applicant’s freedom of expression, within the meaning of Article 10 § 1 of the Convention? If so, was that interference prescribed by law and necessary in terms of Article 10 § 2 in pursuit of a legitimate aim? Was the characterisation of the applicant’s utterances as statements of fact, rather than value judgments, justified?
2. The parties are requested to submit a detailed summary in English or French of the series of articles published by the applicant, including the impugned article, as well as translations into English or French of the specific extracts of the impugned article which were found to be defamatory by the domestic courts.
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