YEREVAN, June 8. /ARKA/. Gevorg Kostanyan, Armenia’s representative in the European Court of Human Rights and a former Armenian prosecutor general, proposed to terminate Azerbaijan’s membership in the Council of Europe, GOlos Armenii reports referring to Panorama.am.



On June 6 and 7, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe discussed compliance with decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.



The European Court’s decision on “Ilgar Mammadov VS Azerbaijan” case was in the agenda as well.



Kostanyan said that Azerbaijan is consistently violating its citizens’ right and that Ilgar Mammadov, who, according to the European Court’s verdict dated from May 22, 2014, has been arrested and convicted illegally and must be freed immediately, is still kept jailed in a clear defiance to the court decision.



“We have stressed at the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe that the policy of Azerbaijan leads to systematic violation of exactly Azerbaijan people’ rights and exactly in this country’s territory,” he said. “That is why we proposed to bring the issue of stripping Azerbaijan of its membership in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for discussion.”



Kostanyan said that more than 20 delegations supported this initiative in their speeches.



In his words, the proposal has been made in the following context: very often, in connection with the cases relating to Armenia, especially matters relating to servicemen in Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Azerbaijan states that Armenia fails to ensure human rights protection.



“Now we made it visible to all CE member countries that Azerbaijan tramples rights of its own citizens,” Kostanyan said.



He said that the procedure has already launched and this means that at least the majority of the CE member countries agree with Armenia over the matter.



It is clear that Azerbaijan is not a democratic country and it should be stripped of its write to vote in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe or stripped of its membership in the future.



“I stressed that general procedures may take other five or ten years, but in fact, the man remain jailed, and this very problem should be solved first of all…” Kostanyan said.



In his words, the way the question was put and the stance were so clear-cut that even Azerbaijan failed to dispute this proposal and put forward any objection. --0----





12:39 08.06.2017