Strasbourg, 14/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - Responsible for monitoring the enforcement of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rulings by countries found guilty of transgressions, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers meets four times a year to discuss the various issues.
One of these meetings took place in Strasbourg from 8 to 10 December to discuss a series of cases involving Albania, Azerbaijan, Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, the Russian Federation, Serbia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Twenty-eight resolutions were passed after the meeting, noting satisfactory application of ECHR rulings and therefore closure of the relevant cases.
Intermediate resolutions were passed for two of the cases, where the Committee of Ministers expressed concern about the lack of progress on prisoner rights in the United Kingdom and freedom of speech in Azerbaijan.
The British issue goes back to October 2005, when the ECHR found in favour of John Hirst, sentenced to 25 years in person for murder of a sixty-year-old. Deprived of the right to vote, like all prisoners in the UK, he argued that he was entitled to free elections, as guaranteed by Protocol No. 1 (Article 3) of the European Convention of Human Rights. By 12 to 5, the ECHR found in his favour, calling the ban “disproportionate.”
The United Kingdom has not changed its legislation, however, and hundreds of other prisoners have now appealed to the ECHR, which has concluded in the light of these repeated demands that there is a fundamental malfunction in British law.
In 2010, it announced that it was temporarily halting examination of similar cases and calling on David Cameron's government to change the law over the following six months.
Five years later, the issue is in deadlock. The British parliament refuses to make any changes to the law in this connection and the question has become emblematic of the tensions between the ECHR and the UK.
In an intermediate resolution, the Committee of Ministers urges Thorbjorn Jagland, Council of Europe secretary general, to insist in his contact with the British authorities on implementation of ECHR rulings and to ask them to provide information about tangible progress in this domain, since the government is considering alternative measures.
The case will be assessed again during the meeting of the Committee of Ministers in a year's time, in December 2016.
For Azerbaijan, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers has again expressed deep concern about serious attacks on freedom of speech in the country. The case under examination is about cases 'Mahmudov and Agazade' and 'Fatullayev.' The rulings were issued in 2008 and 2010 respectively, concerning the arrest of Azerbaijan journalists who have since been released. The arrests revealed abuses of power confirmed by the passing of a law in 2013 on 'defamation,' with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment via re-education in labour camps.
Changes in the law have been requested, but no amendments have yet been made, explains the Committee of Ministers, expressing its profound concern about the fate of Intigam Aliyev, a human rights lawyer condemned in April to seven and a half years in prison by the Serious Crime Court in Baku. Aliyev was Mahmudov, Agazade and Fatullayev's lawyer in their appeals to the European Court of Human Rights, explains the Committee of Ministers' intermediate ruling announcing a reassessment of the case at its March 2016 meeting. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)