Makuchyan and Minasyan v. Azerbaijan and Hungary, No. 17247/13, ECtHR (Fourth Section), 26 May 2020

Right to life. Prohibition of discrimination. Unjustified failure to enforce prison sentence for a very serious ethnically biased hate crime.

Art. 2 ECHR
Art. 14 ECHR

1. Pardons and amnesties are primarily matters of member States’ domestic law and are, in principle, not contrary to international law, save when relating to acts amounting to grave breaches of fundamental human rights.
2. The unjustified failure by a Contracting State to enforce prison sentence for a very serious ethnically biased hate crime, for which one of its citizens had been convicted abroad, amounts to a violation of art. 2, on its procedural limb, taken in conjunction with art. 14 ECHR (case in which the Republic of Azerbaijan, after obtaining from Hungary the extradition of a member of the armed forces, convicted abroad for the murder of an Armenian citizen caused by racial hatred, had granted presidential pardon to the military, publicly offering him various honors and benefits without a clear legal basis in the national law).