Today the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced a decision in the case of Yadigar Sadigly, a member of Musavat Party. The complaint concerned Sadigly’s pre-trial detention in a case opened against him in 2013.
He was detained on June 27, 2013 on the complaint of a person who called himself a veteran of the Karabakh war. Although Sadygov himself was insulted, he was accused of beating the said person.
On January 13, 2014, the court found Sadigov guilty of hooliganism with the use of weapons and sentenced him to 6 years in prison. Subsequently, higher authorities reduced the sentence to 4 years, and then to 3.5 years. Sadigly was recognized as a political prisoner, and in March 2016 he was pardoned.
Lawyer Khalid Agaliyev told Turan that Sadigov stated in his complaint that he had been detained without any grounds and that his pre-trial detention was illegal.
The ECHR also found that the Azerbaijani authorities failed to provide “relevant” and “sufficient” reasons justifying the need to keep the applicant in custody pending trial.
The ECHR recognized the violation of Sadigov’s rights under the Article 5.3 (lack of grounds for pre-trial detention) of the European Convention on Human Rights and decided to pay him monetary compensation in the amount of 3,000 euros for moral damage, and 500 euros for legal costs.
Sadygov himself considers the decision of the ECHR fair in content. However, he pointed to the insignificance of the amount of compensation.
“Of course, the amount of compensation is small, given the fact that I was deprived of my liberty for a long time. But the ECHR has recently been very “kind” to the government on the issue of the amount of compensation. On the other hand, there is a certain “differentiation” in relation to former political prisoners. Some people are assigned large sums, the others – small,” Sadigly noted.