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 Photo: coe.int

The RA Government submitted a response on Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly Vanadzor’s Reference on the execution of ECtHR judgment on Nalbandyan v. Republic of Armenia. The Organization filed its Reference to the ECtHR Department for the Execution of Judgments back on November 7, 2016 expressing its concerns that the RA Government did not ensure complete execution of the sentence; no proper and complete investigation was carried out into cases of ill-treatment and the RA Cassation Court’s ruling on sending the case for re-examination of June 24, 2016 was not executed.

Note that after the European Court of Human Rights announced its ruling on Nalbandyan v. Republic of Armenia by which it recognized violations of Articles 3 (Prohibition of torture) and Article 6 (Right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Nalbandyans’ defense counsel Seda Safaryan submitted an appeal based on new circumstances to the RA Cassation Court, which resulted in the Court’s above ruling that the parties did not receive as of October 10, 2016.

In this regard, the RA Government stated in their response that the parties received the ruling on November 3, 2016 and the Court of First Instance had already admitted the case and held hearings.

In this terms, the Cassation Court’s position on reasonable terms remains unclear: can the 5-month term of sending the ruling or 1-year term of hearing the case be considered reasonable terms for sending the ruling or hearing the case, respectively?

In response to the CoE  Committee of Ministers request, the RA Government also submitted and Action Plan on Judgment Execution which, among other legislative measures, again mentioned drafting relevant amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and submitting them to the RA National Assembly but the RA National Assembly has not passed the Code yet.  Note that the CoE Committee of Ministers especially emphasized the need to pass urgently a new Criminal Procedure Code and urged to provide information on the measures taken and to be taken to properly consider the hypothesis of political motives while examining reports on ill-treatment by police officers.   

It should be added that the CoE Committee of Ministers considers Nalbandyan v. Republic of Armenia within Virabyan case group and carries out enhanced control over it.

The members of the Committee of Ministers also referred to this case during the Committee’s meeting of December 6-8, 2016 noting that they followed with particular interest the reopening of proceedings on ill-treatment report under Nalbandyan’s case and urged the RA authorities to ensure effective and independent trial proceedings.

Reference submitted to ECtHR Department for the Execution of Judgments and RA Government’s response