ECtHR orders Armenia to pay 20,000 euros to Vahan Bayatyan

Armenia will obey to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in respect of Vahan Bayatyan, a member of the religious organization "Jehovah's Witnesses", and pay to him the adjudicated amount of 20,000 euros in dram equivalent. This decision was approved on August 4 at the Armenian government's meeting.

Vahan Bayatyan, born in 1983, was drafted to the army in 2001 and abandoned it for religious reasons. The Court of First Instance sentenced him to 1.5 years of imprisonment. On December 24, 2002, the Armenian Court of Appeal on Criminal and Military Cases changed the decision of the Court of First Instance and sentenced the plaintiff to 2.5 years of imprisonment. On January 24, 2003, the Chamber on Criminal and Military Cases of the Armenian Court of Cassation upheld the verdict. On July 22, 2003, Vahan Bayatyan, after serving a term of 10 months and 17 days in prison, was released under an amnesty.

In June 2003, Vahan Bayatyan filed a complaint to the ECtHR asking to rule that the verdict, decided against him in Armenia, had been a violation of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion guaranteed by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Lower Chamber of the ECtHR rejected the lawsuit. Bayatyan challenged the decision at the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR, and on July 7, 2011, as a result of the re-examination of his case, the ECtHR found Armenia guilty and ordered the state to pay to Vahan Bayatyan 10,000 euros for compensation of moral damage and the same amount – for compensation of legal costs.

The ECtHR's decision already came into force; the deadline for its fulfilment appointed for this October 7.

On August 4, Grair Tovmasyan, Minister of Justice, spoke at the meeting of the Armenian government and presented the draft of the decision. According to the Minister, the "Bayatyan's case" refers to 2001, when Armenia had just joined the Council of Europe, and the law on alternative military service had not been adopted yet. According to Mr Tovmasyan, that fact determined the ECtHR's decision.

The "Jehovah's Witnesses", in their turn, welcome the ECtHR's verdict in respect of Bayatyan and consider it a "milestone in the protection of human rights." According to the organization "Jehovah's Witnesses", the ECtHR's decision charges an obligation to stop persecution and release from prisons those people, whose religious beliefs do not allow them to serve in the army, to other three member states of the Council of Europe – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, and to another countries where refusal to serve in the army is punishable by imprisonment.

At present, 70 members of the "Jehovah's Witnesses", whose names are listed on the website of the organization, serve their terms in the Armenian prisons, having been sentenced for refusing to serve in the army for religious grounds.