Armenia expects that the issue of Armenian prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians taken hostage in Azerbaijan will be discussed at the annual meeting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on May 21.
On March 10, the European Court of Human Rights ruled to notify the Committee of Ministers that, as a decision-making body, it would oblige Azerbaijan to comply with European Court rulings.
Despite the arguments of the Armenian side, Baku claims that there are 72 Armenians detained in Azerbaijan. A group of Armenian lawyers filed a lawsuit in Strasbourg a few days ago over the torture and murder of 19 people.
“This is actually a new practice; the court has never had such a precedent. The Second part of the Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, when a court finds that one of the parties does not fulfill one of its decisions, it notifies the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The Committee of Ministers has no established mechanism for responding to such a notification. However, the annual meeting of the Committee of Ministers at the ministerial level is scheduled for May 21, the agenda of which has not been approved yet. We expect that the issue will be raised in any format at the Ministerial Meeting,” says Igor Mirzakhanyan, Lawyer-Expert of the Office of the Representative of Armenia to the ECHR.
