Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjørn Jagland criticized Azerbaijan for violations of the requirements of European agreement on human rights.
EC Secretary General criticized Azerbaijan
STEPANAKERT, JANUARY 27, ARTSAKHPRESS-ARMENPRESS: As EC official website reports, in the annual report on his activities, which was sent to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on January 26, Jagland strictly criticized Azerbaijan parallel with a number of other countries focusing on gross violations of human rights in that country.
According to him “European convention is under threat…When some countries ignore their obligations or choose which rules to follow or not to follow, it pulls out elements from the convention. And when it begins to "crumble", the process will be difficult to stop,” Jagland said.
Detailing the human rights situation in Azerbaijan, EC Secretary General strongly condemned activist Ilgar Mammadov’s stay under arrest contrary to the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.
“He is the only person in Europe who is still in prison despite the fact that continent's highest legal force Strasbourg Court, based on the rarely used Article 18, concluded that Azerbaijani courts and prosecutor’s office abuse their power during the examination of the case against him. In other words, politically motivated evidences were used against him,” he mentioned.
According to Jagland, in such a situation he is entitled to take extraordinary measures, according to Article 52 of the Convention, which he is invoking, for the first time since he became Secretary General, in order to send a special mission directly into Azerbaijan to pursue Mr Mammadov’s release.
