Anar Mammadli called on the Council of Europe to demand that Azerbaijan comply with the ECHR ruling on his case.

Human rights activist Anar Mammadli, arrested in Azerbaijan, has drawn the attention of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers to the failure to implement ECHR rulings requiring his acquittal in a previous criminal case, which has allowed security forces to bring more serious charges.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," Anar Mammadli, head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Center, who is under arrest, stated that materials in the smuggling and money laundering case were distorted, and financial documents were assessed without an expert examination.

Anar Mammadli, who is being held in Baku's Pre-trial Detention Center No. 1, sent an appeal to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe regarding the failure of the Azerbaijani government to implement the individual measures established by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Mammadli v. Azerbaijan.

In his statement, Mammadli indicated that the government "deliberately delayed sentencing him" "An acquittal" in a previous criminal case against him. By failing to comply with a key condition of the ECHR verdict, the Azerbaijani authorities "misled the Committee of Ministers by falsely claiming that the guilty verdict had been quashed," the activist further notes. "As a result, the previous unlawful conviction continues to be considered an aggravating circumstance in the new criminal case brought against me on trumped-up charges," Mammadli emphasizes in a statement, a copy of which was provided to a Caucasian Knot correspondent. Mammadli further describes the ongoing failure to implement the seven-year-old ECHR decision as a situation in which "the unenforced judgment itself has become a form of punishment." He claims that this not only violates his personal rights but also constitutes "an open challenge to the authority and credibility of the Strasbourg system." According to him, such behavior "creates a dangerous precedent on a continental scale" and sends the wrong signal to other states that they can ignore ECHR decisions.

Mammadli notes that he has been held in pretrial detention in the Baku Pretrial Detention Facility for over 540 days, and that national courts have extended his pretrial detention four times, each time citing only the "graveness of the charges." He emphasizes that none of these decisions met fair trial standards, and the appellate courts upheld them using similarly formulaic reasoning.

He emphasizes that this issue now extends beyond his personal case and concerns trust in the European human rights system as a whole. "At stake is not only the implementation of individual decisions, but also the credibility of the entire system of enforcement of the European Convention on Human Rights," Mammadli notes.

He calls on the Committee of Ministers to take a firmer stance, including by adopting a new interim resolution establishing clear criteria and deadlines for the implementation of the decision. "At this critical moment, the Committee of Ministers must maintain a principled position against the backdrop of an increasingly large-scale attack on democratic values and ensure confidence in the Convention system," Mammadli believes.

"Political imprisonment is not only a violation of individual rights but also a direct threat to democratic values and the European legal order itself. Continued delays in the implementation of these decisions undermine the integrity of the entire Convention system," Mammadli concludes.

A new case against Mammadli is pending before the Baku Court of Grave Crimes, his lawyer, Elchin Sadigov, told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "Despite the fact that the ECHR found Mammadli's criminal prosecution in the first case unlawful and ordered the Azerbaijani government to acquit him, this was not done. Moreover, the previous criminal case is now being used to aggravate the charges, as it is being interpreted by the investigation as evidence of Mammadli's recidivism," noted lawyer Sadigov.

The government's failure to implement the ECHR ruling against the activist is "a blatant example of the authorities' disregard for their obligations to the Council of Europe," according to an Azerbaijani expert in international law, who did not wish to publish his name.

"For seven years, the authorities have failed to implement the ECHR ruling in the Mammadli case. Matters have reached the point where all unimplemented decisions by the Azerbaijani government are grouped together into the "Anar Mammadli group" and are periodically reviewed by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The Committee each time orders the authorities to implement these decisions, warning them of the consequences. Over the past year and a half, the government has completely stopped implementing ECHR verdicts. According to Council of Europe rules, failure to fulfill obligations to the organization entails sanctions, including expulsion from the organization. Azerbaijan once found itself on the brink of this in the case of opposition politician Ilgar Mammadov. At that time, the Committee of Ministers initiated this process, since the authorities had not released him from prison, contrary to the ECHR decisions. Ultimately, Mammadov was released and even acquitted. However, geopolitical realities have now changed, and Council of Europe institutions are heavily influenced by European governments, which do not want to spoil relations with Baku over oil and gas supplies to Europe from Azerbaijan," the source said.