Court Torture Ruling Could Prompt Change

Europe's human-rights tribunal fines the Azeri government for judicial violence against an opposition politician. From EurasiaNet. by Rovshan Ismayilov 25 January 2007 A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in a torture case brought by an opposition leader against the Azeri government could have significant implications for the country’s police practices and judicial system, local observers and human-rights activists believe.

On 11 January, the Strasbourg-based court fined the Azeri government 10,000 euros for the police torture of Sardar Jalaloglu, a deputy chairman of the opposition Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, who, along with scores of other opposition activists, was arrested in October 2003 following demonstrations in Baku against the election of President Ilham Aliev. The government has three months in which to pay the fine.

In his suit, Jalaloglu argued that police had badly beaten him, threatened him with rape, and had smashed up his apartment; he also claimed that he had been the target of political discrimination in rulings by local courts. The court found that the "violence" committed against Jalaloglu "should be qualified as torture."

At a 15 January press conference in Baku, Jalaloglu called the court’s decision "a victory for all Azerbaijani democratic forces." The political activist, who was released from prison in 2005 under a presidential pardon, said that he is eager to use the case to eliminate the "system of torture" which, he claims, has become "the standard practice for the country’s law-enforcement agencies."

Jalaloglu said he will push for the criminal prosecution of Interior Minister Ramil Usubov, Deputy Interior Minister Vilayat Eyvazov (a former head of the ministry’s Anti-Organized Crime and Terrorism Department), Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov, and several judges as well as Interior Ministry investigators and officials in connection with his case. The opposition leader’s lawyer, Fuad Agaev, has pledged to push for the annulment of all local court rulings on Jalaloglu’s detention.

The Azeri government has not yet responded to the court ruling or to the charges made by Jalaloglu.

That silence may prove increasingly difficult to maintain, however. Jalaloglu’s case is the second recent judgment by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the government of Azerbaijan. On 16 November 2006, the court ruled that the government should pay 5,500 euros to Fahmin Hajiev, a Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan activist who served as chief of the Interior Ministry’s special forces in 1992–1993 under former president Abulfaz Elchibey. After the collapse of Elchibey’s government, Hajiev was arrested in August 1995 and sentenced to a 15-year prison term for murder and other crimes. The ECHR found that Azerbaijan’s Court of Appeals had violated Hajiev’s rights by failing for two years to rule on an appeal of his sentence.

However, some observers in Baku say that the court’s ruling on Jalaloglu differs sharply from the Hajiev case. "It is the first time when a European court has recognized the fact of torture in prisons in Azerbaijan and imposed a penalty on the government," commented Alesker Mammadli, a well-known lawyer and member of the Azerbaijani Bar Association. "[T]he ECHR in fact officially confirmed that Azerbaijani courts are working on the basis of political orders."

The ruling establishes a negative precedent for the government, Mammadli continued. "It is not often when the European Court of Human Rights mentions torture in its judgments. Usually, they call it ‘mistreatment of prisoners.’ "

International human-rights watchdogs have been outspoken in their condemnation of the reported use of torture by Azeri law-enforcement agencies, particularly following the 2003 election demonstrations. The Interior Ministry’s Anti-Organized Crime and Terrorism Department has been singled out as the most unscrupulous and brutal of Azerbaijan’s law-enforcement agencies in the reported use of torture against opposition activists arrested after the October 2003 protests.

One opposition activist’s alleged experience with the department echoes these claims. In an interview with EurasiaNet, Natik Jabiev, an activist from the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan who was arrested on the same day as Sardar Jalaloglu, claimed that he had been severely beaten by the chief of the department's anti-gangster division, Vagif Mammadov, and threatened with rape if he did not provide testimony that Jalaloglu and Democratic Party of Azerbaijan chairman Rasul Guliev had staged riots in Baku on 15–16 October 2003 to overthrow the government. A visit by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross alone put a halt to the violence, Jabiev claimed. The activist was eventually charged with "rowdy behavior" and "disobeying the police" and sentenced to 15 days in prison.

Representatives of Azerbaijan’s law-enforcement agencies have rejected such reports about the terror-fighting department in the past. In a May 2004 interview with independent television station ANS, Farhad Suleymanov, chief of the department's investigation section, called the claims "wicked calumny" and maintained that force was only used by law-enforcement agents against those resisting arrest.

In an interview with ANS that same year, a senior official from the Azeri prosecutor’s office stated that a special investigation had failed to substantiate activist Jabiev’s claims of mistreatment.

To date, the government has not prosecuted any law-enforcement officials on the charges of torture brought by human-rights and opposition activists. In 2005, terror-fighting department chief Eyvazov, a colonel, was made a general and promoted to become a deputy interior minister.

Human-rights activists and opposition members hope that the court ruling will force that record to change. Hajimurad Sadaddinov, the president of the Baku-based Democracy and Human Rights Promotion Foundation who helped Jalaloglu bring his case to the ECHR in 2004, believes the ruling showed Azeris that they should be more active in using European courts to defend their rights.

Rena Safaralieva, executive director of Transparency Azerbaijan, the local affiliate of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, seconds that belief. The judgment on Jalaloglu’s case will lead to a larger number of appeals to the ECHR from Azerbaijan, she said. "People whose rights are violated in Azerbaijan will understand that they can seek justice in Strasbourg," Safaralieva said, adding, though, that at the same time, "no doubt, the number of groundless appeals will increase as well."

According to Sadaddinov, the quality of the cases before the court could also play a role in rulings on other claims of human-rights abuses from Azerbaijan. The activist argued that most of the roughly 1,000 complaints recently sent to the court from Azerbaijan "have no chance to be upheld because these cases were incorrectly put together and do not meet the [court’s] standards." Forensic evidence from medical examinations that indicated that Jalaloglu had been severely beaten considerably strengthened the politician’s case, he added.

The court already has received several high-profile cases brought against the Azeri government for civil-rights violations; plaintiffs include exiled Democratic Party of Azerbaijan chairman Guliev, ex-Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliev and his brother, Rafik, the former president of the state-run Azpetrol company, and popular singer Flora Kerimova.

Local observers, however, also look for the human-rights court's ruling to bring changes to court practices within Azerbaijan itself. One-third of the complaints Transparency Azerbaijan receives are about corruption in the courts and difficulties with implementation of court rulings, Safaralieva stated. "Of course, I do not expect revolutionary improvements," she said. "However, if we will have more such judgments on Azerbaijan from the European Court of Human Rights in the future, it would make our law-enforcement agencies and judges more careful and compliant with the law."

Traditional Azeri ally Turkey could also serve as an example in this regard, Sadaddinov argued. Fifteen to 20 years ago, a similar situation existed in Turkey’s police stations, he noted. "However, after a number of judgments by the ECHR on such cases [of torture], the government of Turkey understood it has a negative impact on the country’s image," Sadaddinov said. "Serious measures were taken and now the situation in Turkish prisons and police stations is much better."

Reports by the international community have noted considerable improvements in Azerbaijan’s treatment of prisoners over the past few years. Monitoring, nonetheless, continues. Most recently, in late November 2006, a delegation from the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture visited the country to assess what steps had been taken in the past four years to improve law-enforcement agencies’ performance record. The committee’s findings have not yet been made public.