08:22, 21 September 2018

ECtHR treats arrest of Azerbaijani rights defender Intigam Aliev as politically motivated

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has satisfied the complaint, submitted by Intigam Aliev, an Azerbaijani rights defender, about his arrest in 2014. The Court has ruled that he deserves a compensation for the suffered moral harm in the amount of 20,000 euros.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 22, 2015, a court in Baku sentenced Intigam Aliev, the head of the organization "Society for Legal Enlightenment", to 7.5 year in prison within the case of a large-scale embezzlement and tax evasion. On March 28, 2016, the Supreme Court of Azerbaijan replaced the real imprisonment for conditional one; and the rights defender was released.

Intigam Aliev is a well-known lawyer, who had represented Azerbaijani citizens at the ECtHR.

The ECtHR has ruled that Aliev's case was part of "an alarming picture of arbitrary arrests and detentions of government critics, activists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan," the ECtHR's website has reported.

Intigam Aliev himself has noted that recently the authorities, as a rule, fail to fulfil their obligations to pay compensations under the ECtHR's decisions, adding that he has not received a single royalty for the cases that he has won at the ECtHR since 2014.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 20, 2018 at 08:33 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.

Author: Faik Medjid

Source: CK correspondent