The Council of Europe: When Icarus Followed the Flight Instructions

In this book, looking through the prism of his own experience, the author discusses the reliability of the Council of Europe's protections against politically motivated arrest and sentencing in a member state. Ilgar Mammadov is the leader of the Republican Alternative (REAL) Party, which opposes what it calls "the ongoing erosion of the republican foundations of the Azerbaijani state". Between 2012 and 2019 he spent five and a half years in prison, but in 2020 the country's Supreme Court acquitted Mammadov of all charges in a long delayed decision in accordance with his unprecedented landmark victory at the European Court of Human Rights. In the February 2020 elections, the REAL Party was recognized as winning only one out of a total of 125 parliamentary seats, while international observers criticized the polls for violations, such as the exclusion of Mammadov from all ballots since 2013.