European Court of Human Rights

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 174

May 2014

Ilgar Mammadov v. Azerbaijan - 15172/13

Judgment 22.5.2014 [Section I] See: [2014] ECHR 504

Article 18

Restrictions for unauthorised purposes

Restriction of applicant’s liberty for purposes other than bringing him before competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence: violation

Facts - The applicant, an opposition politician with a history of criticising the Government, maintained a personal internet blog on which he commented on various political issues. On 24 January 2013 he travelled to Ismayilli, a town where rioting had broken out the day before. He described his impressions in blog posts in which he suggested that at least part of the official Government version of the events may have been untrue and was an attempt at a cover-up. On the following day the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in a joint press statement that the applicant had committed illegal actions which were calculated to inflame the situation in the country and would be fully and thoroughly investigated and receive legal assessment. The applicant was invited for questioning on three occasions before being charged with criminal offences and remanded in custody. His appeals against that measure were rejected.

Law - Article 5 § 1 (c): The Government had not submitted any specific arguments to rebut the applicant’s assertion that there had existed no information or evidence giving rise to a “reasonable” suspicion that he had committed any of the criminal offences with which he was charged. In particular, the prosecution’s official documents mentioned no witness statements or any other specific information that might have given them reason to suspect the applicant, nor was any such evidence presented to the courts which ordered the applicant’s remand in custody. The vague and general references by both the prosecution and the courts in their respective decisions to unspecified “case material”, in the absence of any precise statement, information or concrete complaint could not be regarded as sufficient to justify the “reasonableness” of the suspicion on which the applicant’s arrest and detention had been based.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 6 § 2: The Court had consistently emphasised the importance of the choice of words by public officials in their statements before a person had been tried and found guilty of a particular criminal offence. In the applicant’s case, the impugned remarks had not been made in the framework of criminal proceedings but as part of a joint press statement by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Government claimed that the purpose of that statement had been to inform the public about the steps taken by the authorities in connection with the Ismayilli events, and in particular their intention to investigate the applicant’s involvement in those events. However, the statement, assessed as a whole, had not been made with necessary discretion and circumspection. By stating that the actions by the applicant had been “illegal” and that “it has been established that [the applicant] made appeals to local residents ..., such as calls to resist the police, not to obey officials and to block roads”, the authorities had essentially prejudged the assessment of the facts by the courts. As such, the impugned statement must have encouraged the public to believe the applicant guilty before he had been proved guilty according to law.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

Article 18: The applicant’s arrest had been linked to his specific blog entries, in particular, his post of 28 January 2013 which included sourced information shedding light on the “true causes” of the Ismayilli protests, which the Government had reportedly attempted to withhold from the public and which had immediately been picked up by the press. Even though the prosecution had not made any express references to the applicant’s blog entries, the accusations against him had first been made in the official press statement issued a day after the post, and he had first been invited to the Prosecutor General’s Office for questioning on the same day. There was nothing in the case file to show that the prosecution had any objective information giving rise to a bona fide suspicion against the applicant at that time, and it had not been shown that they were in possession of any such information or witness statements at any point prior to his arrest. The above circumstances indicated that the actual purpose of the impugned measures had been to silence or punish the applicant for criticising the Government and attempting to disseminate what he believed to be true information the Government were trying to hide. Accordingly, the restriction of the applicant’s liberty had been applied for purposes other than bringing him before a competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence.

Conclusion: violation (unanimously).

The Court also held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 5 § 4 of the Convention.

Article 41: EUR 20,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage; claim in respect of pecuniary damage dismissed.

(See also Lutsenko v. Ukraine, 6492/11, 3 July 2012, Information Note 154; and Tymoshenko v. Ukraine, 49872/11, 30 April 2013, Information Note 162)

 

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes