A military truck carrying the 30-year-old Major Hayk Toroyan and another serviceman, Hrant Gharibian, was ambushed by Azerbaijani commandos shortly after the outbreak of four-day hostilities that left at least 180 soldiers from both sides dead. Both men were apparently brutally executed moments later.
In a ruling on a lawsuit filed by Toroyan’s parents and sister, the ECHR backed their claim that “the Azerbaijani soldiers had tortured [Hayk Toroyan] before they killed him by decapitating him.”
“At later stages, information about the circumstances of H.T.’s death and even a photograph of his head were made public in mainstream and social media,” it said. “Furthermore, the missing body parts of H.T. have never been returned to the family and hence a proper burial of the whole body could not be carried out.”
The Strasbourg-based court ruled that the Azerbaijani authorities have failed to come up with “any explanation, documentation or concrete information that would show that the perpetrators of that treatment had not been the Azerbaijani soldiers who had shot at the military vehicle.” Nor have they investigated the war crime, it said.
The court also ordered Baku to pay the plaintiffs 90,000 euros ($105,000) in damages for “profound and continuous distress” endured by them.
“We managed to prove that Azerbaijani servicemen first decapitated Hrant Gharibian, after which they cut off Hayk Toroyan’s hands and then decapitated him while he was still alive,” said Siranush Sahakian, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. “The decapitator then circulated pictures of the severed head.”
Two other Armenian soldiers were also found beheaded during the April 2016 hostilities. According to Sahakian, the ECHR is expected to rule soon on two dozen other lawsuits filed by their relatives as well as the families of other victims of alleged Azerbaijani war crimes.
The lawyer regretted the fact that the ECHR took 10 years to hand down the first ruling on the 2016 fighting. She said the court could have prevented “numerous cases of decapitations” reported during the 2020 war in Karabakh had it acted much faster.