Afghan Mukhtarly's defence Protection states obstacles to complaint to ECtHR

The complaints on the cases of the journalist, Afghan Mukhtarly, and the oppositional politician, Nemat Panakhly, sent by mail to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, failed to leave Azerbaijan within a month, Elchin Sadygov, an advocate, has stated. He believes that the sending of letters is delayed intentionally.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the oppositional journalist, Afghan Mukhtarly, emigrated from Azerbaijan to Georgia in 2014, but in 2017, he was kidnapped in Georgia, brought to Azerbaijan and tried there. On January 12, 2018, the court sentenced him to six years in prison on charges of illegally crossing the border, smuggling and resisting a law enforcer. Nemat Panakhly, the Chairman of the Azerbaijani National Statehood Party, was arrested on October 12, 2018. Human rights defenders did not rule out that his political statements caused his arrest.

"A month ago I sent complaints on the cases of Mukhtarly and Panakhly. Today, during a check, I found that my letters had not even been sent out from Azerbaijan. This is not the first time that letters to the ECtHR are 'lost' at the postal delivery centre," said the advocate, Elchin Sadygov.

He saw in the protraction of sending the complaints a violation of the article on the right to an individual complaint of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

"Obviously, they try to delay sending letters as much as possible, to make the deadlines for filing complaints expire, or at least to delay the proceedings," Bashir Suleimanly, the head of the Institute of Civil Rights, has explained.