By Siranush Adamyan
A European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgment holding Azerbaijan responsible for the torture and killing of Armenian officer Hayk Toroyan during the April 2016 war between the countries has become final.
On Monday, a five-judge panel of the court's Grand Chamber rejected a request to refer the case for re-examination, according to an ECHR press release. Armenian legal experts say the request came from Azerbaijan. The rejection means the judgment can no longer be appealed.
The court delivered the judgment on June 18 in V.T. and Others v. Azerbaijan. It is the first ECHR ruling related to the 2016 war. The court has communicated 22 related applications to Azerbaijan, with 21 still pending.
"The June 18 ECHR judgment has thus entered into force, and it will be a cornerstone for the examination of similar ongoing and future complaints," Liparit Drmeyan, former head of Armenia's Office of the Representative on International Legal Matters, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
He pointed to what he described as a contradiction in Baku's approach. Azerbaijan declares at the highest level that it does not accept the court's jurisdiction and has stopped cooperating with the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, Drmeyan wrote. Yet when it suits it, Baku "remembers the importance of legal processes and files complaints."
Toroyan, 30, headed a rocket-artillery armament service in Mataghis, in northern Nagorno-Karabakh. In April 2016, he and serviceman Hrant Gharibyan were carrying ammunition to a command post in Talish when they came under Azerbaijani attack.
The court found that Azerbaijani servicemen had tortured Toroyan before killing him by beheading. His body was later recovered with the head and arms missing; these body parts were never returned to his family. Azerbaijan offered no explanation and conducted no effective investigation, the court said.
The European court has found violations of the right to life and the prohibition of torture, as well as a separate violation over the suffering of his family. It ordered Azerbaijan to pay Toroyan’s family about $103,000 in damages and roughly $16,000 in legal costs.
Chingiz Asgarov, Azerbaijan's representative to the ECHR, said in June that Baku "rejects the conclusions" of the judgment. He argued the court lacked sufficient evidence and favored materials submitted by Armenia.
Baku's ties with the Council of Europe have deteriorated sharply in recent years. In January 2024, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe refused to ratify the credentials of Azerbaijan's delegation. In April 2025, President Ilham Aliyev said none of the court's decisions were valid for Azerbaijan. In July 2026, he said Baku was considering leaving the Council of Europe altogether. As of August, Azerbaijan had not implemented any of the ECHR judgments in favor of Armenian applicants, according to Armenian publication Hetq.
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