Saribekyan and Balyan v. Azerbaijan, No. 35746/11, ECtHR (Fifth Section), 30 January 2020

Right to life and prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment. Obligation to carry out effective investigations. Link between racist attitudes and acts of violence.

Art. 2 ECHR 
Art. 3 ECHR 

1. Arts. 2 and 3 ECHR enshrine fundamental values of the democratic societies making up the Council of Europe. From these provisions derives the obligation for national authorities to carry out effective investigations against suspected violations of the European Convention. In particular, under conditions of tension and hostility between Contracting States, national authorities have an additional duty to verify whether racial hatred has contributed to the conduct harmful to the right to life and the prohibition of torture (case in which an Armenian citizen, arrested after involuntarily crossing into Azerbaijan and suspected of being a terrorist, had died in the course of detention).

2. The lack of diplomatic relations does not absolve the Contracting States from the obligation under Article 2 ECHR to cooperate in criminal investigations (case in which the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General had not responded to the Armenian Prosecutor General's request for international judicial cooperation, regarding the death of an Armenian citizen detained in Azerbaijan as a terrorist suspect).