YEREVAN. – It is very welcomed that the Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has issued a statement and called for removing Azerbaijan from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as soon as possible, since this country does not carry out the decisions by this court.

Gevorg Kostanyan, Armenia’s representative to the ECtHR and head of the country’s delegation to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE), told the above-said to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

“Azerbaijan not only consistently violates human rights in its own country, but it consistently does not wish to restore human rights violations within the territory of its country,” Kostanyan stressed, in particular. “That is, this [the said statement] is a necessary and timely action which the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has initiated.”

When asked whether other actions could follow this statement, even Azerbaijan’s ejection from the CoE, Kostanyan said, in particular: “It’s not possible to remove any country from the jurisdiction of the ECtHR, but it remains a CoE member country. PACE is probably raising a political issue so that the matter of removing Azerbaijan from the CoE is discussed.”

And when asked low likely this may be, Gevorg Kostanyan responded specifically as follows: “Actually, a process of removing any country from the CoE has never been started. (…). But see that the sequence of several actions brings results, nonetheless. Therefore, it’s not ruled that, nonetheless, this will lead to the removal of Azerbaijan from the CoE.”