An Ad Hoc Mechanism for the Mammadli Group of Cases

On 12 May 2026, the Campaign to End Repression in Azerbaijan filed a Rule 9.2 submission with the Department for the Execution of Judgments on the Mammadli v Azerbaijan (Application No. 47145/14) group of cases, emanating from the judgement concerning Anar Mammadli‘s first politically motivated arrest and sentence.

The submission documents how Azerbaijan’s persistent failure to implement the Court’s judgments has allowed the misuse of criminal law against critical voices to consolidate into administrative practice. Seven years on, the applicants’ convictions remain valid and the legislative framework that enabled the original Article 18 violations remains in force.

Four converging issues are identified: a judiciary under executive control despite formalistic reforms of the Judicial-Legal Council; restrictive NGO and media legislation that pushes independent organisations into illegality; the recycled template of financial offence indictments deployed against journalists, human rights defenders, and election monitors; and reliance on Anar Mammadli’s non-expunged 2014 conviction to aggravate the 2025 indictment against him.

Standard supervisory tools have not produced engagement. The Interim Resolution adopted on 17 September 2025 (CM/ResDH(2025)252) records the absence of constructive dialogue. The Annex documents 56 individuals detained or convicted between 2022 and 2026, establishing the empirical record of an administrative practice rather than a series of isolated incidents.

The Campaign asks the Committee of Ministers to adopt an interim resolution establishing a time-bound ad hoc mechanism mandated to oversee case-specific remedies for Article 18 violations, drawing on PACE Resolution 1900 (2012) on the definition of political prisoners and Appendix IV of the Reykjavik Declaration 2023.

An Annexe that Speaks for Itself:

The annexe to the submission lists 56 individuals detained, prosecuted, or convicted between December 2022 and November 2025, including human rights defenders, civil society leaders, journalists, election monitors, labour activists, academics, and the opposition leader Ali Karimli. Several already hold rulings in their favour from the European Court of Human Rights, among them Anar Mammadli, Tofig Yagublu, Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, Bashir Suleymanli, and Akif Gurbanov. Sentences imposed range from three years for labour activists facing drug charges, to nine years for journalists of Abzas Media, Meydan TV, and RFE/RL, twelve years for Azer Gasimli, fifteen years for Bahruz Samadov, and eighteen years for Iqbal Abilov. The list is not exhaustive.