The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found Azerbaijan responsible for the torture and unlawful killing of 30-year-old Armenian officer Major Hayk Toroyan during the April 2016 Four-Day War in and around Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), where Azerbaijani soldiers killed him after he had been wounded and could no longer defend himself, in the first ruling the Court has issued among the cases of that war, reports Zartonk Media.
The significance of the ruling extends far beyond this single case. By holding that Azerbaijan exercised jurisdiction over Toroyan through its soldiers’ authority and control over him, the Court rejected the kind of evasion Baku has long relied on to escape accountability, and established a legal foundation that Armenian advocates can now invoke in the 21 related April 2016 cases still pending before it. The precedent reaches further still, offering a basis for future claims arising from Azerbaijan’s wider pattern of violence against Armenians, from the 2020 war to the September 2023 ethnic cleansing of Artsakh.
In its judgment in V.T. and Others v. Azerbaijan, delivered on June 18, the Court ruled against Azerbaijan, finding violations of Article 2 (right to life) and Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case concerns Major Hayk Toroyan, born in Yerevan in 1985, who served in the armed forces of the then Artsakh Republic as head of the rocket and artillery armament service of his unit in Mataghis. The Court anonymized the proceedings, referring to him by his initials and withholding the names of the applicants, his parents and sister. The Court found that Azerbaijani forces captured him during the four-day clashes, tortured him, severed his hands, and beheaded him while he was still alive.
According to the case file, Toroyan and his driver left their unit on the morning of April 2, 2016, to deliver ammunition to a post north of the village of Talish when their truck was ambushed and came under heavy fire. At 11.25 that morning, Toroyan sent a text message to a fellow soldier that read, “They shot me.” His driver was found decapitated near the vehicle. A forensic examination concluded that Toroyan remained conscious for up to two hours, that his hands were severed seconds before his death, and that he was beheaded while still alive. His head and hands have never been returned, and he was buried without them.
The Court found that Azerbaijan had jurisdiction over the killing through its soldiers’ “State agent authority and control” over the victim, rejecting Azerbaijan’s argument that it bore no responsibility because the events occurred on territory outside its control. The Court held that Toroyan was killed after he had been wounded and could no longer defend himself or move on his own, conduct it found incompatible with international humanitarian law, and that the severe violence inflicted on him amounted to torture.
The Court also found a separate violation of Article 3 in relation to the suffering of his family, noting that they were unable to recover his remains or carry out a proper burial, which caused them profound and continuous distress.
Although Azerbaijan denied responsibility, the Court drew on evidence originating from Azerbaijani sources. A photograph of Toroyan’s severed head was posted to a Facebook page by a soldier presumed to be Azerbaijani, alongside the caption “I have got one”; an Armenian forensic bureau later matched the face in the image to Toroyan. The Court found that this and other material publicized by Azerbaijani officials corroborated the family’s account.
A ceasefire ended the fighting at noon on April 5, 2016, four days after it began. In its aftermath, the bodies of fallen servicemen were returned, some mutilated and missing heads, hands, or ears.
Anna Melikyan, a lawyer who worked on the case, said the ruling came at last, nearly ten years after the April War, in the matter of one of the Armenian servicemen killed and beheaded during the fighting. She noted that the Armenian government had not filed an interstate complaint over these cases, which were instead pursued by a group of human rights advocates, among them her colleagues Ara Ghazaryan, Haykuhi Harutyunyan, Hasmik Harutyunyan, and Araks Melkonyan. Armenia did intervene in the proceedings as a third party in support of the family.
The Court ordered Azerbaijan to pay €60,000 jointly to Toroyan’s parents and €30,000 to his sister in non-pecuniary damages, along with €14,210 in costs and expenses to be paid to the Yerevan-based NGO Rule of Law, which represented the family.
Toroyan had been due to be presented for promotion to lieutenant colonel that month. He was posthumously awarded Armenia’s Combat Cross, First Degree.
