A disputed border crossing
Manvel Saribekyan was a 20-year-old resident of Ttujur, an Armenian village near the border with Azerbaijan. He entered Azerbaijani territory on 11 September 2010. His family said fog had disoriented him while he was collecting wood and looking for stray cattle. Azerbaijani authorities instead accused him of belonging to a sabotage group that intended to attack a school.
A televised interrogation showed Saribekyan repeating that accusation against himself. Armenian officials said the recording showed signs of abuse and rejected the confession. At the time, those were opposing governmental accounts. The later European Court judgment assessed the evidence independently and did not treat the televised statement as proof that justified what happened in custody.
Death in military-police custody
Saribekyan was held at the Military Police Department of Azerbaijan's Ministry of Defence in Baku. On 5 October 2010, authorities announced that he had been found hanging in his cell. A joint official statement said forensic experts had detected no signs of violence and treated the death as suicide.
Armenian officials disputed that version and alleged that Saribekyan had been beaten or driven to death. The International Committee of the Red Cross had not been permitted to visit him before his death. Azerbaijan delivered a death certificate later in October, and the body was returned to Armenia on 4 November.
Forensic evidence after repatriation
After the body was returned, Armenian authorities opened a criminal investigation. Their forensic examination documented injuries to Saribekyan's neck, head and body. The parents maintained that those findings contradicted the suicide-only explanation and showed severe abuse before death.
Armenia requested legal assistance from Azerbaijan. The request received no substantive response, and the Armenian pre-trial investigation was suspended in December 2011. In Azerbaijan, investigators closed the relevant proceedings after concluding that no third party had been involved. These procedural gaps later became central to the human-rights case.
The European Court judgment
On 30 January 2020, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in Saribekyan and Balyan v. Azerbaijan, application no. 35746/11. By five votes to two, it found a violation of Article 2 because of Saribekyan's death in detention. The Court held that the government had not convincingly accounted for the circumstances and that state responsibility was engaged.
By six votes to one, the Court found a separate procedural violation of Article 2 because the Azerbaijani investigation was ineffective. It emphasized missing or inadequate investigative steps and the failure to cooperate with Armenia's request for assistance despite the absence of diplomatic relations.
The Court also found, by six votes to one, a violation of Article 3 because Saribekyan had been tortured before his death. It awarded his parents €60,000 jointly in non-pecuniary damages and €2,200 for costs and expenses.
What the judgment did not decide
The judgment established Azerbaijan's responsibility under the European Convention. It did not identify or convict an individual perpetrator in a criminal trial. No reliable source reviewed for this publication documented a later individual prosecution or conviction for the torture or death.
Current status
The custodial death is legally adjudicated at the state-responsibility level. Individual criminal accountability remains unresolved. The archive therefore places the case among unresolved files while clearly recording the final international judgment.
Questions that remain
The unresolved questions concern who inflicted the injuries, who knew or directed what occurred, whether the purported suicide scene was adequately preserved and why no effective cross-border investigation identified responsible individuals. Without an individual judgment, no person is labeled here as Saribekyan's murderer or torturer.