Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
9
Amnesty International September 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
consequence
(Quälen
eines
Gefangenen
mit
Todesfolge), more than two years after the incident.
The police officers, who were suspended shortly after
the incident, were allowed to return to work in early
February.
Police shooting
(update to AI Index: EUR 01/03/00)
At the end of June AI learned that the police officer
accused of shooting dead an unarmed man with his
own gun on 19 May 2000 in Vienna will go on trial.
The dead man was referred to in the Austrian news
media as Imre B. The police officer is reportedly
facing the charge of manslaughter through culpable
negligence (fahrlässige Tötung) and will be tried by
Hietzing District Court (Bezirksgericht Hietzing) at a
later, as yet unspecified, date.
A Z E R B A I J A N
Repeat parliamentary elections
(update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2001)
On 7 January, repeat elections to the Milli Mejlis
(Parliament) were held for 11 single-mandate
constituencies in Azerbaijan for which the results of
the 5 November ballots had been annulled due to
serious violations in the electoral process. However,
despite the fact that votes in those constituencies had
been annulled for the nation-wide proportional ballot
as well as for the single-mandate constituencies
(Azerbaijan has a mixed electoral system), there were
no repeat elections for the proportional ballot. Some
opposition parties, including Musavat, the Democratic
Party and the Liberal Party, boycotted the repeat
elections, and the National Independence Party
withdrew all its candidates at the last moment. The
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
reported that the repeat elections were an
improvement on the 5 November ballot, with fewer
instances of intimidation of voters and observers and
less interference in the electoral process. However,
observers again noted a number of serious
irregularities, such as ballot stuffing, multiple voting,
a failure to follow counting procedures in the majority
of polling stations, and artificially inflated turnout
figures.
Accession to the Council of Europe
(update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2001)
The Committee of Ministers had formally invited
Azerbaijan and Armenia to join the Council of Europe
on 9 November 2000, but simultaneously requested
Azerbaijan to respond within one month to charges by
international observers of electoral fraud, and to
correct the reported frauds. Following an examination
of Azerbaijan’s response by the Monitoring Group set
up by the Committee of Ministers, and a visit to
9
Communication on the activities of the Committee of
Ministers, Report by the Latvian Chair of the Committee of Ministers
to the Parliamentary Assembly (25 January 2001), document
Azerbaijan to observe the partial repeat elections, (as
well as a visit to Armenia) the Committee of Ministers
set 25 January as formal accession date for Armenia
and Azerbaijan.
9
On the day of joining, Armenia and
Azerbaijan signed the European Convention for the
Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms, as well as Protocol No. 6 to that
convention, which provides for the abolition of the
death penalty for crimes committed in peacetime. The
countries had committed to signing and ratifying those
two conventions within one year of joining.
10
Council of Europe Secretary-General Walter
Schwimmer instituted post-accession monitoring of
the two new members’ commitments relating to
respect for democratic principles, rule of law and the
observance of human rights. In particular, the
Secretary General appointed in February three
independent experts to inquire into cases of alleged
political prisoners in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
According to the Council of Europe, the experts are
requested to give an opinion on cases referred to them
as to whether the persons in question may be defined
as political prisoners on the basis of objective criteria,
and in the light of the case-law of the European Court
of Human Rights and Council of Europe standards.
This was prompted by the requirement placed on
Azerbaijan on accession to the Council of Europe to
release or grant a new trial to "those prisoners who are
regarded as ‘political prisoners’ by human rights
protection organizations".
Moves were made in the first half of this year to
fulfil another commitment made on accession, that of
broadening access to the Constitutional Court,
including by individual complainants. The Milli
Mejlis coordinator on the Council of Europe’s Venice
Committee, Safa Mirzoyev, is reported to have
announced in February that a plan of amendments to
the Constitutional Court system, including allowing
individual citizens to apply to the court, had been
drawn up. The amendments were scheduled to be
implemented within a six-month timeframe, although
by the end of the period under review, no amendments
had yet been implemented.
The death penalty
The law “On extraditing criminals”, that forbids
Azerbaijan from extraditing an individual in cases
where the crime forming the basis of the extradition
request is punishable by the death penalty in the
requesting country, was signed by the President on 15
May and has now entered into force. AI welcomes this
law as a positive development in line with the growing
CM/AS(2001)2, 24 January 2001
10
See PACE Opinion Numbers 121 and 122