CCPR/C/112/D/1972/2010 new Code they were punishable with shorter prison terms. For the charges that were punishable by death under the old Code, the new Code foresaw different prison terms or life imprisonment. The Qaradag District Court imposed the life imprisonment sentence on the author for some of the charges, subsuming in that sentence the shorter prison sentences for the rest of the charges. On 31 October 2005, the author filed an appeal with the Appeals Court requesting it to quash the decision of the Qaradag District Court, and to impose the maximum penalty of 15 years’ imprisonment. An addition to that appeal was submitted on 7 December 2005. The appeal was rejected on 9 December 2005, following a hearing at which neither the author nor his lawyer were present, but the Prosecution was summoned and presented its arguments. The decision was not delivered to the author until 19 January 2006, 40 days after its adoption, while the statutory deadline for its appeal was 30 days. The author, who was at the time hospitalized, filed a cassation appeal on 30 January 2006. He also filed, on an unspecified date, a motion for the statutory deadline to be restored, because the appeal decision had been served to him late. On 28 March 2006, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, ruling that the missed statutory deadline could not be restored. 6 2.11 On 17 January 2006, the author attempted to reopen the case based on newly established circumstances. On 3 March 2006, the Supreme Court’s President rejected the application. In June 2007, the author attempted to lodge another appeal based on newly discovered circumstances, namely resolution 1545 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which urged “the authorities to ensure a case-by-case review of life sentences which were the result of the abolition of the death penalty and allow the persons concerned to benefit from the retroactive application of the more favourable criminal law provisions adopted in 2000”7 and to the case of an individual, whose death sentence, passed in 1994 had been replaced by 15 years’ imprisonment.8 That appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court by a letter of 16 July 2007. Another appeal filed on 10 August 2007 with the Plenum of the Supreme Court was rejected on 6 September 2007. 2.12 In 2005, one of the individuals that had allegedly participated in torturing the author was arrested for violent crimes and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment. Based on that fact, on 11 July 2006, the author submitted a request to the Prosecutor’s Office, asking it to initiate a “cassation protest”. On 10 August 2006, the Office of the Procurator General informed the author that his complaint had been sent for investigation to the Department for the Supervision of Investigations of the Office of Procurator General. On 18 September 2006, the Deputy Head of the Department of Supervision of Investigations of the Office of Procurator General responded that the allegations that the author had been tortured by the said individual were not confirmed. 2.13 With regard to the commutation of the death sentence into life imprisonment and the application of foreign law in Azerbaijan, the author filed a series of complaints to the Constitutional Court which were all rejected. 2.14 After all domestic remedies had been exhausted, the author submitted a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights. On 28 November 2008, a committee of three judges rejected the complaint as inadmissible on the basis of articles 34 and 35 of the Convention without elaborating further its decision. 6 7 8 6 The author submits that one of the judges on the panel had passed numerous death sentences in the 1990s. Resolution 1545 (2007) (see note 4 above), para 8.9. The author refers to the case of Igor Kryzhanovski, a decision of a Russian Federation court regarding a prisoner transferred from Azerbaijan to serve his sentence.