ECtHR upholds complaint of two Jehovah's Witnesses from Armenia

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg has found Armenia guilty of breaking the right to freedom of conscience and religion in relation to Ike Bukharatyan and Ashot Tsaturyan, convicted in 2003 for refusal from military service on religious convictions.

In April 2003, residents of Yerevan Ike Bukharatyan and Ashot Tsaturyan were sentenced to two years in prison each. They viewed it as a violation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which guarantees the right to the freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and filed complaints to the ECtHR.

On January 10, 2012, the latter satisfied both complaints, obliging Armenia to pay 6000 euros as compensation for moral harm and 4000 euros for reimbursement of legal costs to each of the applicants, says the press release posted on the website of the ECtHR.

"These two decisions are just in time," said the lawyer Shane Brady, who is defending the interests of Jehovah's Witnesses in Armenia, convicted for refusal from military service.

"We hope that now the Armenian authorities will revise their position and release 58 young people who are prisoners of conscience," the official website of Jehovah's Witnesses quotes the lawyer's comment.

So far, the Armenian authorities have given no comments on the decisions of the ECtHR passed on the complaints of Ike Bukharatyan and Ashot Tsaturyan.