ECtHR decision in Chankayev v. Azerbaijan, Application No. 56688/12 [Articles 3 and 13], 14 December 2013

Date: 
Wednesday, November 20, 2013

The Applicant, a Russian national, fled as a Chechen rebel to Azerbaijan in 2002, where he is currently detained. In 2006, he was convicted for criminal offences (including founding an illegal armed group and illegal possession of firearms) committed in Azerbaijan. Also in 2006, he was temporarily extradited to Russia and sentenced to 6 years in prison for membership of a group fighting against the Russian State. In 2012, he was returned to Azerbaijan to serve his sentence for offences committed there. Russia’s second extradition request, which was granted in August 2012, and against which the Applicant’s appeals were unsuccessful, is stayed by a Rule 39 interim measure. Before the ECtHR, the Applicant complains that he had no effective remedy to challenge his extradition in Azerbaijan (Article 13) on the ground that he would face a risk of torture of returned to Russia (Article 3).

The ECtHR rejected the Applicant’s Article 3 complaint, on the basis of the general situation and the Applicant’s personal circumstances. As to the former, the Applicant would be returned to Russia to serve the remainder of his sentence in a State-run penal facility, and does not face deportation to a pre-trial/remand detention facility or a ‘secret’ prison in the North Caucasus, where the situation is accepted, on the basis of COI and previous case law, to be Article 3 non-compliant. The Court considered that it has not been shown to the required standard of proof that the situation in Russian penal facilities for convicted prisoners is such as to call for a total ban on the extradition of convicted prisoners to that country, for instance on account of conditions of detention or a risk of ill-treatment of detainees. As to personal circumstances, the Russian authorities did not find the Applicant to have played a ‘prominent role’ in the Second Chechen War. Further, his complaints of ill-treatment during the temporary extradition to Russia are ‘brief, sketchy and lacking detail’, are not supported by the available medical evidence, and were not raised on his return to Azerbaijan. The ECtHR did however uphold the Article 13 complaint, on the ground that the Azerbaijani courts did not adequately assess the Applicant’s Article 3 complaint when examining the appeal against extradition.

Read the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.


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Keywords: 
Detention
Effective remedy (right to)
Inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
Tags: 
ECtHR
Azerbaijan