European Court of Human Rights finds violation in case of Azerbaijani journalist Mirkadirov

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found a violation of the right to a fair trial in the case of Azerbaijani journalist Rauf Mirkadirov. To compensate for non-pecuniary damage, the court ordered Azerbaijan to pay 3,600 euros.

In the view of the Strasbourg court, the evidence presented against the journalist was insufficient and ambiguous, and the Azerbaijani national courts did not properly assess it. The court found that the criminal case was not conducted in line with fair trial standards and that Article 6, paragraph 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated.

The case against Mirkadirov was initiated in 2014-2015. Azerbaijani special services accused him of passing classified information to Armenian special services. According to the charges, the journalist collected information on strategic and military facilities, including Baku airport and the highway leading to it, during meetings held under the name of "public diplomacy".

In December 2015, the Baku Grave Crimes Court found Mirkadirov guilty of high treason and sentenced him to six years in prison. In March 2016, the appeals court replaced the sentence with a suspended sentence. The journalist applied to the Strasbourg court and challenged the violation of his right to a fair trial.

According to the European court's assessment, the audio recordings and conversation transcripts in the case materials were fragmentary and unclear. The defense argued that images of the objects that the prosecution considered secret were publicly available on Google Earth.

"The European court pointed out that the conversation transcript used against me was so fragmentary and unclear that on its basis one could not reasonably conclude that I passed on information threatening Azerbaijan's security. Azerbaijani courts accepted the materials of the Ministry of National Security as established facts and did not independently examine the evidence," Mirkadirov told Kavkazsky Uzel.

According to the journalist, the Strasbourg court considered his arguments well-founded and significant for the case. "That is why the significance of this decision is completely clear to me personally. The label of a traitor to the homeland has been removed from my name," he said.

Mirkadirov expressed regret that he had waited more than 12 years to see justice restored. "The European court's decision came twelve and a half years after my arrest. Today I am 65 years old. So the words 'I lived to see this decision' are not just words for me. I really did live to see it. But I could also have not lived to see it," the journalist said.

In his words, being accused of high treason meant more than just restriction of freedom, and it also struck a blow to his reputation and dignity.

Mirkadirov is currently in political emigration in Switzerland. He left Azerbaijan in 2016, and in March 2017 he received political refugee status in Switzerland.