ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT VIOLATES PROCEDURE FOR IMPLEMENTING ECHR RULINGS

10.17.2013 23:39 epress.am

Since 2010, oversight procedures in the Council of Europe’s Committee
of Ministers, which supervises the execution of European Court of
Human Rights (ECHR) judgments, have changed significantly, and with
it changed states’ obligations. According to the new procedure, after
the ruling is in effect, within a maximum period of 6 months, the
respondent state is obliged to present to the Committee of Ministers
an Action Plan on what individual and general measures it plans to
take to implement the judgments.

As told to Epress.am by attorney Ara Ghazaryan, in July 2013, the
Government of Armenia had not presented its Action Plan in11 of the
38 cases currently overseen by the Committee.

“Of these cases, 10 are LEAD cases; that is, they are court rulings
where the ECHR has observed systemic problems in national legislation
and/or judicial practice and in this respect issued pilot judgments.

Implementing judgments of such cases, consequently, requires more
attention and acceleration; meanwhile, in this case, inaction is
observed. In any case, this inaction isn’t so strictly assessed by
the Committee, since only one of the cases, Virabyan’s case, has
been moved to a stricter procedure, which is contrary to the adopted
policy,” he said.

According to Ghazaryan, Armenia also has not presented other necessary
explanations about implementing ECHR rulings. For example, since 2010,
the Committee has been waiting for information from the Armenian
government on 5 cases of violations when individuals are detained
(by police), registered by the ECHR . It has been waiting for news of
the results of a large-scale state program based on a presidential
decree to renovate detention centers since 2004, especially those
in Etchmiadzin and Armavir, since it was in these institutions that
victims of the aforementioned cases were detained.

“In the cases of administrative arrest (Article 11 of the Convention),
the Government of the Republic of Armenia hasn’t presented the
amendments to the legislation on freedom of assembly and association
made after 2008 and whether applicants continue to be persecuted. The
Committee is waiting for certain information it required in two of
the cases,” summed up the attorney.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress